#
#
#
-%title The Last Continent (2)
+%title The Last Continent (10)
+# p. 260 (Harper Torch edition)
%passage 1
-PEOPLE'S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE
-PROCESS IS CALLED 'LIVING'.
+"Is it true that your life passes before your eyes before you die?"
+
+YES.
+
+"Ghastly thought, really." Rincewind shuddered. "Oh, /gods/, I've just
+had another one. Suppose I /am/ just about to die and /this/ is my whole
+life passing in front of my eyes?"
+
+I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE'S WHOLE LIVES /DO/ PASS IN
+FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED "LIVING". [...]
[The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
[The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
+# p.3 (Harper Torch edition)
+%passage 3
+All tribal myths are true, for a given value of "true."
+
+ [The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
+%e passage
+# pp. 13-14
+%passage 4
+Ponder /knew/ he should never have let Ridcully look at the invisible
+writings. Wasn't it a basic principle never to let your employer know what
+it is that you actually /do/ all day?
+
+But no matter what precautions you took, sooner or later the boss was bound
+to come in and poke around and say things like, "Is this where you work,
+then?" and "I thought I sent a memo out about people brining in potted
+plants," and "What d'you call that thing with the keyboard?"
+
+ [The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
+%e passage
+# p. 21 (passage begins mid-paragraph)
+%passage 5
+[...] Any true wizard, faced with a sign like "Do not open this door.
+Really. We mean it. We're not kidding. Opening this door will mean the
+end of the universe," would /automatically/ open the door in order to see
+what all the fuss was about. This made signs a waste of time, but at least
+it meant that when you handed what was left of the wizard to his grieving
+relatives you could say, as they grasped the jar, "We /told/ him not to."
+
+ [The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
+%e passage
+# p. 22 (the books are acting up while the Librarian is incapacitated and
+# now it's unsafe to go into the library)
+%passage 6
+"But we're a university! We /have/ to have a library!" said Ridcully. "It
+adds /tone/. What sort of people would we be if we didn't go into the
+Library?"
+
+"Students," said the Senior Wrangler morosely.
+
+"Hah, I remember when I was a student," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
+"Old 'Bogeyboy' Swallett took us on an expedition to find the Lost Reading
+Room. Three weeks we were wandering around. We had to eat our own boots."
+
+"Did you find it?" said the Dean.
+
+"No, but we found the remains of the previous year's expedition."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"We ate their boots, too."
+
+ [The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
+%e passage
+# pp. 45-46
+%passage 7
+Death had taken to keeping Rincewind's lifetimer on a special shelf in his
+study, in much the way that a zoologist would want to keep an eye on a
+particularly intriguing specimen.
+
+The lifetimers of most people were the classic shape that Death thought
+was right and proper for the task. They appeared to be large eggtimers,
+although, since the sands they measured were the living seconds of
+someone's life, all the eggs were in one basket.
+
+Rincewind's hourglass looked like something created by a glassblower who'd
+had hiccups in a time machine. According to the amount of actual sand it
+contained--and Death was pretty good at making this kind of estimate--he
+should have died long ago. But strange curves and bends and extrusions of
+glass had developed over the years, and quite often the sand was flowing
+backwards, or diagonally. Clearly, Rincewind had been hit by so much
+magic, had been thrust reluctantly through time and space so often that
+he'd nearly bumped into himself coming the other way, that the precise end
+of his life was now as hard to find as the starting point on a roll of
+really sticky transparent tape.
+
+Death was familiar with the concept of the eternal, ever-renewed hero, the
+champion with a thousand faces. He'd refrained from commenting. He met
+heroes frequently, generally surrounded by, and this was important, the
+dead bodies of /very nearly/ all of their enemies and saying, "Vot the hell
+shust happened?" Whether there was some arrangement that allowed them to
+come back again afterwards was not something he would be drawn on.
+
+But he pondered whether, if this creature /did/ exist, it was somehow
+balanced by the eternal coward. The hero with a thousand retreating backs,
+perhaps. Many cultures had a legend of an undying hero who would one day
+rise again, so perhaps the balance of nature called for one who wouldn't.
+
+Whatever the ultimate truth of the matter, the fact now was that Death did
+not have the slightest idea of when Rincewind was going to die. This was
+very vexing to a creature who prided himself on his punctuality.
+
+ [The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
+%e passage
+# p. 61
+%passage 8
+A black and white bird appeared, and perched on his head.
+
+"You know what to do," said the old man.
+
+"Him? What a wonga," said the bird. "I've been lookin' at him. He's not
+even heroic. He's just in the right place at the right time."
+
+The old man indicated that this was maybe the definition of a hero.
+
+"All right, but why not go and get the thing yerself?" said the bird.
+
+"You've gotta have heroes," said the old man.
+
+"And I suppose I'll have to help," said the bird. It sniffed, which is
+quite hard to do through a beak.
+
+"Yep. Off you go."
+
+The bird shrugged, which /is/ easy to do if you have wings, and flew down
+off the old man's head. It didn't land on the rock but flew into it; for
+a moment there was a drawing of a bird, and then if faded.
+
+Creators aren't gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It's men
+that make gods. This explains a lot.
+
+The old man sat down and waited.
+
+ [The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
+%e passage
+# p. 186
+%passage 9
+She had a very straightforward view of foreign parts, or at least those
+more distant than her sister's house in Quirm where she spent a week's
+holiday every year. They were inhabited by people who were more to be
+pitied than blamed because, really, they were like children.(1) And they
+acted like savages.(2)
+
+(1) That is to say, she secretly considered them to be vicious, selfish
+and untrustworthy.
+
+(2) Again, when people like Mrs. Whitlow use this term they are not, for
+some inexplicable reason, trying to suggest that the subjects have a rich
+oral tradition, a complex system of tribal rights and a deep respect for
+the spirits of their ancestors. They are implying the kind of behavior
+more generally associated, oddly enough, with people wearing a full suit
+of clothes, often with the same sort of insignia.
+
+ [The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
+%e passage
+# p. 187 (last paragraph truncated)
+%passage 10
+"I suppose he wouldn't have done anything stupid, would he?" he said.
+
+"Archchancellor, Ponder Stibbons is a fully trained wizard!" said the Dean.
+
+"Thank you for that very concise and definite answer, Dean," said Ridcully.
+
+ [The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
+%e passage
%e title
#
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