Imagination is only intelligence having fun. A healthy mind knows how to switch between worlds, and which one you need to eat and sleep in.

And these are your reasons, my lord?" "Do you think I have others?" said Lord Vetinari. "My motives, as ever, are entirely transparent." Hughnon reflected that 'entirely transparent' meant either that you could see right through them or that you couldn't see them at all.

What was the point of education, he thought, if people went out afterward and used it?

Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.

Down there - he said - are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any inequity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no.

It was raining in the small, mountainous country of Llamedos. It was always raining in Llamedos. Rain was the country's main export. It had rain mines.

It's always surprising to be reminded that while you're watching and thinking about people, all knowing and superior, they're watching and thinking about you, right back at you.