Highlights from Wyrd Sisters by Terry Prachett Last read on December 29, 2021
Highlights from this book
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The road, Hwel felt, had to go somewhere. This geographical fiction has been the death of many people. Roads don't necessarily have to go anywhere, they just have to have somewhere to start.
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Words were indeed insubstantial. They were as soft as water, but they were also as powerful as water and now they were rushing, over the audience, eroding the levees of veracity, and carrying away the past.
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The theater troubled her. It had a magic of its own, one that didn’t belong to her, one that wasn’t in her control. It changed the world, and said things were otherwise than they were. And it was worse than that. It was magic that didn’t belong to magical people. It was commanded by ordinary people, who didn’t know the rules. They altered the world because it sounded better.
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"That's just about land," said Granny. "It's not the same as a kingdom. A kingdom is made up of-all sorts of things. Ideas. Loyalties. Memories, It all sort of exists together. And then all these things create some kind of life. Not a body kind of life, more like a living idea. Made up of everything that's alive and what they're thinking. And what the people before them thought.' Magrat reappeared and began to lay the fire with the air of one in a trance. 'I can see you've been thinking about this a lot,' said Nanny, speaking very slowly and carefully. 'And this kingdom wants a better king, is that it?' 'No! That is, yes. Look-' she leaned forward - 'it doesn't have the same kind of likes and dislikes as people, right?' Nanny Ogg leaned back. 'Well, it wouldn't, would it,' she ventured. 'It doesn't care if people are good or bad. I don't think it could even tell, any more than you could tell if an ant was a good ant. But it expects the king to care for it.' 'Yes, but,' said Nanny wretchedly. She was becoming a bit afraid of the gleam in Granny's eye. 'Lots of people have killed each other to become king of Lancre. They've done all kinds of murder.' 'Don't matter! Don't matter!' said Granny, waving her arms. She started counting on her fingers. 'For why,' she said. 'One, kings go round killing each other because it's all part of destiny and such and doesn't count as murder, and two, they killed for the kingdom. That's the important bit. But this new man just wants the power. He hates the kingdom.' 'It's a bit like a dog, really,' said Magrat. Granny looked at her with her mouth open to frame some suitable retort, and then her face softened. 'Very much like,' she said. 'A dog doesn't care if its master's good or bad, just so long as it likes the dog."
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Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.
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Genuine anger was one of the worlds greatest creative forces. But you had to learn to control it. That didn't mean you let it trickle away. It meant you damned it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.
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There was something here, Death thought, that nearly belonged to the gods. Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected in it pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflects the landscape. And yet... and yet... Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things you might think they would want to escape from -- hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in. He was fascinated.