This is where the gods play games with the lives of men, on a board which is at one and the same time a simple playing area and the whole world. And Fate always wins.

In my early teens, I read every bound volume of the magazine Punch. Every writer of any distinction in the English language, and I mean including America and England, at some time wrote for Punch. Jerome K. Jerome, who wrote Three Men In A Boat, I loved. I was very impressed when I read a piece by Mark Twain in Punch, and realized that despite the fact that they were on different continents, Jerome K. Jerome and Mark Twain had the same kind of laconic, laid-back, "The human race is damn stupid, but quite interesting" attitude. They were almost talking with the same voice.

And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions.

Luck is my middle name. Mind you, my first name is Bad.

Be one of the crowd? It went against everything a wizard stood for, and a wizard would not stand for anything if he could sit down for it, but even sitting down, you had to stand out.

It was one of those problematic occasions with long silences, sporadic coughs, and people saying isolated things like, "Well, isn't this nice.

Dwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they'd seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, "Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!" or "Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!