#
#
#
-%title Pyramids (2)
-%passage 1
-The trouble with life was that you didn't get a chance to practice before
-doing it for real.
+%title Pyramids (11)
+# p. 218 (ROC edition)
+%passage 1 (passage ends mid-paragraph)
+What a chap needed at a time like this was a sign, some sort of book of
+instructions. The trouble with life was that you didn't get a chance to
+practice before doing it for real.
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
+# p. 128 (passage starts mid-paragraph and ends mid-paragraph)
%passage 2
-Mere animals couldn't possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a
-human being to be really stupid.
+Mere animals couldn't possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a
+human being to be really stupid.
+
+ [Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
+%e passage
+# pp. 9-10 ('tlingas' is accurate)
+%passage 3
+It was a full-length mirror. All assassins had a full-length mirror in
+their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them
+when you were badly dressed.
+
+Teppic examined himself critically. The outfit had cost him his last
+penny, and was heavy on the black silk. It whispered as he moved. It was
+pretty good.
+
+At least the headache was going. It had nearly crippled him all day; he'd
+been in dread of having to start the run with purple spots in front of his
+eyes.
+
+He sighed and opened the black box and took out his rings and slipped them
+on. Another box held a set of knives of Klatchian steel, their blades
+darkened with lamp black. Various cunning and intricate devices were taken
+from velvet bags and dropped into pockets. A couple of long-bladed
+throwing /tlingas/ were slipped into their sheaths inside his boots. A
+thin silk line and folding grapnel were wound around his waist, over the
+chain-mail shirt. A blowpipe was attached to its leather thong and dropped
+down his back under his cloak; Teppic pocketed a slim tin container with an
+assortment of darts, their tips corked and their stems braille-coded for
+ease of selection in the dark.
+
+He winced, checked the blade of his rapier and slung the baldric over his
+right shoulder, to balance the bag of lead slingshot ammunition. As an
+afterthought he opened his sock drawer and took a pistol crossbow, a flask
+of oil, a roll of lockpicks and, after some consideration, a punch dagger,
+a bag of assorted caltraps and a set of brass knuckles.
+
+Teppic picked up his hat and checked its lining for the coil of cheesewire.
+He placed it on his head at a jaunty angle, took a last satisfied look at
+himself in the mirror, turned on his heel and, very slowly, fell over.
+
+ [Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
+%e passage
+# p. 30
+%passage 4
+He'd always remember the first night in the dormitory. It was long enough
+to accommodate all eighteen boys in Viper House, and draughty enough to
+accommodate the great outdoors. Its designer may have had comfort in mind,
+but only so that he could avoid it whenever possible: he had contrived a
+room that could actually be colder than the weather outside.
+
+ [Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
+%e passage
+# p. 92
+%passage 5
+A few stars had been let out early. Teppic looked up at them. Perhaps, he
+thought, there is life somewhere else. On the stars, maybe. If it's true
+that there are billions of universes stacked along side one another, the
+thickness of a thought apart, then there must be people elsewhere.
+
+But wherever they are, no matter how mightily they try, no matter how
+magnificent the effort, they surely can't manage to be as godawfully stupid
+as us. I mean, we work at it. We were given a spark of it to start with,
+but over hundreds of thousands of years we've really improved on it.
+
+ [Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
+%e passage
+# p. 96 (Ptaclusp the pyramid builder, sons Ptaclusp IIa and Ptaclusp IIb)
+%passage 6
+Descendants! The gods had seen fit to give him one son who charged you for
+the amount of breath expended in saying "Good morning", and another one who
+worshipped geometry and stayed up all night designing aqueducts. You
+scrimped and saved to send them to the best schools, and then they went and
+paid you back by getting educated.
+
+ [Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
+%e passage
+# p. 136
+%passage 7
+It's a fact as immutable as the Third Law of Sod that there is no such
+thing as a good Grand Vizier. A predilection to cackle and plot is
+apparently part of the job spec.
+
+High priests tend to get put in the same category. They have to face the
+implied assumption that no sooner do they get the funny hat than they're
+issuing strange orders, e.g., princesses tied to rocks for itinerant sea
+monsters and throwing little babies in the sea.
+
+This is a gross slander. Throughout the history of the Disc most high
+priests have been serious, pious and conscientious men who have done their
+best to interpret the wishes of the gods, sometimes disembowelling or
+flaying alive hundreds of people in a day in order to make sure they're
+getting it absolutely right.
+
+ [Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
+%e passage
+# pp. 206-208 (text has 'that's now it happened'; 'now' changed to 'how' here)
+%passage 8
+Copolymer, the greatest storyteller in the history of the world, sat back
+and beamed at the greatest minds in the world, assembled at the dining
+table.
+
+Teppic had added another iota to his store of new knowledge. 'Symposium'
+meant a knife-and-fork tea.
+
+"Well," said Copolymer, and launched into the story of the Tsortean Wars.
+
+"You see, what happened was, /he'd/ taken /her/ back home, and her
+father--this wasn't the old king, this was the one before, the one with the
+wossname, he married some girl from over Elharib way, she had a squint,
+what was her name now, began with a P. Or an L. One of them letters,
+anyway. Her father owned an island out on the bay there, Papylos I think
+it was. No, I tell a lie, it was Crinix. /Anyway/ the king, the other
+king, he raised an army and they.... Elenor, that was her name. She had
+a squint, you know. But quite attractive, they say. When I say married,
+I trust I do not have to spell it out for you. I mean, it was a bit
+unofficial. Er. Anyway, there was this wooden horse and after they'd got
+in... Did I tell you about this horse? It was a horse. I'm pretty sure
+it was a horse. Or maybe it was a chicken. Forget my own name next! It
+was wossname's idea, the one with the limp. Yes. The limp in his leg, I
+mean. Did I mention him? There'd been this fight. No, that was the other
+one, I think. Yes. Anyway, this wooden pig, damn clever idea, they made
+it out of thing. Tip of my tongue. Wood. But that was later, you know.
+The fight! Nearly forgot the fight. Yes. Damn good fight. Everyone
+banging on their shields and yelling. Wossname's armour shone like shining
+armour. Fight and a half, that fight. Between thingy, not the one with
+the limp, the other one, wossname, had red hair. /You/ know. Tall fellow,
+talked with a lisp. Hold on, just remembered, he was from some other
+island. Not him. The other one, with the limp. Didn't want to go, he
+said he was mad. Of course, he /was/ bloody mad, definitely. I mean, a
+wooden cow! Like wossname said, the king, no not that king, the other one,
+he saw the goat, he said 'I fear the Ephibeans, especially when they're mad
+enough to leave bloody great wooden livestock on the doorstep, talk about
+nerve, they must think we was born yesterday, set fire to it,' and, of
+course, wossname had nipped in round the back and put everyone to the
+sword, talk about laugh. Did I say she had a squint? They said she was
+pretty, but it takes all sorts. Yes. Anyway, that's how it happened.
+/Now/, of course, wossname--I think he was called Melycanus, had a limp--he
+wanted to go home, well, you would, they'd been there for /years/, he
+wasn't getting any younger. That's why he dreamt up the thing about the
+wooden wossname. Yes. I tell a lie, Lavaelous was the one with the knee.
+Pretty good fight, that fight, take it from me."
+
+He lapsed into self-satisfied silence.
+
+"Pretty good fight," he mumbled and, smiling faintly, dropped off to sleep.
+
+Teppic was aware that his own mouth was hanging open. He shut it. Along
+the table several of the diners were wiping their eyes.
+
+"Magic," said Xeno. "Sheer magic. Every word a tassle on the canopy of
+Time."
+
+"It's the way he remembers every tiny detail. Pin sharp," murmured Ibid.
+
+ [Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
+%e passage
+# p. 211
+%passage 9
+"I'd love to stay and listen to you listening to me all day," he said.
+"But there's a man over there I'd like to see."
+
+"That's amazing," said Endos, making a short note and turning his attention
+to a conversation further along the table. A philosopher had averred that
+although truth was beauty, beauty was not necessarily truth, and a fight was
+breaking out. Endos listened carefully.(1)
+
+(1) The role of listeners has never been fully appreciated. However, it is
+well known that most people don't listen. They use the time when someone
+else is speaking to think of what they're going to say next. True Listeners
+have always been revered among oral cultures, and prized for their rarity
+value; bards and poets are ten a cow, but a good Listener is hard to find,
+or at least hard to find twice.
+
+ [Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
+%e passage
+# p. 278 (perhaps ought to end this one with the first paragraph...)
+%passage 10
+In the middle of the firestorm the Great Pyramid appeared to lift up a few
+inches, on a beam of incandescence, and turn through ninety degrees. This
+was almost certainly the special type of optical illusion which can take
+place /even though no-one is actually looking at it/.
+
+And then, with deceptive slowness and considerable dignity, it exploded.
+
+It was almost too crass a word. What it did was this: it came apart
+ponderously into building-sized chunks which drifted gently away from one
+another, flying serenely out and over the necropolis. Several of them
+struck other pyramids, badly damaging them in a lazy, unselfconscious way,
+and then bounded on in silence until they ploughed to a halt behind a small
+mountain of rubble.
+
+Only then did the boom come. It went on for quite a long time.
+
+ [Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
+%e passage
+# p. 280 (passage starts mid-paragraph and ends mid-paragraph)
+%passage 11
+Man was never intended to understand things he meddled with.
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# Death Quotes are always one line, and '%e passage' can be omitted.
#
%section Death
-%title Death Quotes (22)
+%title Death Quotes (23)
%passage 1
WHERE THE FIRST PRIMAL CELL WAS, THERE WAS I ALSO. WHERE MAN IS, THERE AM I. WHEN THE LAST LIFE CRAWLS UNDER FREEZING STARS, THERE WILL I BE.
%e passage
# p. 13
%passage 22
DON'T LET IT UPSET YOU.
+# Pyramids, p. 57 (ROC edition)
+%passage 23
+I CAN SEE THAT YOU HAVE GOT A LOT TO THINK ABOUT.
%e title
%e section
#
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