After a while, another voice said: One, two, three, four- And the universe came into being. It was wrong to call it a big bang. That would just be noise, and all that noise could create is more noise and a cosmos full of random particles. Matter exploded into being, apparently as chaos, but in fact as a chord. The ultimate power chord.

People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else.

Every step is a first step if it's a step in the right direction.

What have I always believed? That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.

We're dealing here," said Vimes, "With a twisted mind." "Oh, no! You think so?" "Yes." "But... no... you can't be right. Because Nobby was with us all the time." "Not Nobby," said Vimes testily. "Whatever he might do to a dragon, I doubt if he'd make it explode. There's stranger people in this world than Corporal Nobbs, my lad." Carrot's expression slid into a rictus of intrigued horror. "Gosh," he said.

Unseen University was much bigger on the inside. Thousands of years as the leading establishment of practical magic in a world where dimensions were largely a matter of chance in any case had left it bulging in places where it shouldn't have places. There were rooms containing rooms which, if you entered them, turned out to contain the room you'd started with, which can be a problem if you are in a conga line.

Ponder just let it happen. It's because their minds are so often involved with deep and problematic matters, he told himself, that their mouths are allowed to wander around making a nuisance of themselves.