Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Meters, the Mile, the Marathon -- he'd run them all.

But, in truth, it had not exactly been gold, or even the promise of gold, but more like the fantasy of gold, the fairy dream that the gold is there, at the end of the rainbow, and will continue to be there forever - provided, naturally, that you don't go and look. This is known as finance.

The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.

He'd heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne. This is, of course, absolutely true.

Humans need fantasy in order to be human.

It had a very long pendulum, and the pendulum swung with a slow tick-tock that set his teeth on edge, because it was the the kind of delibrate, annoying ticking that wanted to make it abundantly clear that every tick and every tock was stripping another second off your life.

Good or bad, do it as you. Too many lies and there's no truth to go back to.