And then you bit onto them, and learned once again that Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler could find a use for bits of an animal that the animal didn't know it had got. Dibbler had worked out that with enough fried onions and mustard people would eat anything.

I hate cats." Death's face became a little stiffer, if that were possible. The blue glow in his eye sockets flickered red for an instant. "I SEE," he said. The tone suggested that death was too good for cat haters.

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

There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.

I read the best works of some of the best satirists, and indeed best writers from the beginning of the Victorian era to about the 1960s. If you want to be a blacksmith, you go and watch the blacksmith working, and you work out what the blacksmith does.

Building a temple didn't mean you believed in gods, it just meant you believed in architecture.

I wonder if it's like this for mountain climbers, he thought. You climb bigger and bigger mountains and you know that one day one of them is going to be just that bit too steep. But you go on doing it, because it’s so-o good when you breathe the air up there. And you know you'll die falling.