I’ve been on a reading binge lately, devouring three Discworld books in the past month and a half (among other books). Since I know a lot of you out there have as deep an affliction with Terry’s work as I do, I thought it might be interesting to see what about the books and the world sticks with us.
I’ll start. Mine’s just one line, and I’m pretty sure if you’ve read the book, you’ll know where it comes from.
BELIEVE IN THE HOGFATHER.
Granny Weatherwax generates whole bunches of memorable moments, just by existing, but my favorite is probably this exchange (written from memory) from Carpe Jugulum.
“Are you going to let an old lady go out on a night like this? There could be monsters out there!”
A voice from the back of the crowd said, “Why should we care what happens to monsters?”
Mightily Oats tried again. “Would you go out on a night like this?”
“Depends if I knew where Granny Weatherwax was.”
“I heard that, Bestiality Carter,” warned Granny Weatherwax, but there was just the faintest hint of satisfaction in her voice.
His prose was better, but that’s the gist of it.
Well, I’ve only read 2 and a half (or so) Discworld novels so far, but one of my favorite moments is when the two guards discuss whether Death has a first name in Soul Music.
“He looked like a Susan.”
All my favorite moments so far involve Death.
My favorite passage isn’t funny at all, but it gets me every time. It’s the scene in Men at Arms where Carrot is in his room during Vimes’ wedding and is waiting for Angua.
Angua rocks my world.
My favorite moment is in Men at Arms (I believe-my copy’s gone missing) when two coppers visit the funeral of a clown. The clowns, a miserable, unhappy lot, go into all their rote antics, with “much falling of prats.”
“All in all, it was a scene to make a happy man slit his wrists on a fine spring morning.”
[sub]Oh man, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to list them all…[/sub]
I’m in the middle of a Discworld binge myself…re-reading the entire series in order, from The Color of Magic to Thief of Time. Started last Sunday, and so far I’m up to Sourcery.
Virtually any description of the Luggage is enough to make me grin like a maniac.
There’s a line that Death says in Reaper Man that I absolutely love:
WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?
Since I recently finished reading The Light Fantastic, and this exchange between Rincewind and Twoflower was particularly good:
*“If you’re going to suggest I try dropping twenty feet down a pitch dark tower in the hope of hitting a couple of greasy little steps which might not even still be there, you can forget it,” said Rincewind sharply.
“There is an alternative, then.”
“Out with it, man.”
“You could drop five hundred feet down a pitch black tower and hit stones which certainly are there,” said Twoflower.
Dead silence from below him. Then Rincewind said, accusingly, “That was sarcasm.”*
And from Small Gods:
The part where Brutha dies and leads Vorbis across the desert to judgment is always moving to me, somehow.
And from Guards! Guards!, there was a surprising description of a door that (to my public embarrassment) made me laugh out loud in a hospital cafeteria:
No mere doorway got that grim without effort, one felt. It looked as though the architect had been called in and given specific instructions. We want something eldritch in dark oak, he’d been told. So put an unpleasant gargoyle thing over the archway, give it a slam like the footfall of a giant, and make it clear to everyone, in fact, that this isn’t the kind of door that goes “ding-dong” when you press the bell.
Are we talking about funniest moment, or just awe-inspiring brilliant writing/plotting/whatever moment?
Either one, it’s damn tough to call. Lemme get back to you…
In Men at Arms, when Detritus comes blasting into the Assassins’ headquarters, hellbent for revenge over the death of his best friend, and Carrot calls him to attention. That ever-so-mild clink as Detritus gloweringly tapped his helmet sent chills down my spine.
What to choose, what to choose … mmmh … there are so many great lines. I’ll go for my Funniest Pratchett Moment ™:
In “Witches abroad” when Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax are at the walking hut of the Voodoo witch (Ms. Gogol?), Granny’s hat falls into the swamp and an alligator grabs it. Granny grabs a handy vine and starts clobbering the alligator with it.
Nanny: “I don’t think you should do that, Esme!”
Granny: “Don’t you tell me what I should and shouldn’t do, this giant lizard has my best hat and I’m going to get it back!”
Nanny:“That’s OK, Esme, but you shouldn’t be hitting it with a snake!”
Esme lets go of the snake and it slithers away, looking slightly confused…
This scene makes me laugh out loud every time.
Can’t remember the exact book (read them years ago…), but…
"You know what they say about million-to-one shots…9 times out of 10 you can pull them off! "
(Proceeds to make shot more difficult with blindfold, hopping and one arm tied behind back, to ensure hitting the shot is definitely a million to one)
Too many to chose from. I like in The Color of Magic when Death sees Rincewind walking down the street in Ankh Morpork and realizes that he “has an appointment with him” in some other far away city. He then tries to convince Rincewind to ride out there, to which Rincewind yells no and runs away. Death then takes one soul from a near by kitten, and walks away petting it.
In Interesting Times, when Twoflower comes and digs Rincewind out of the mud, Rincewind asks him if he understood the statue’s signed directions:
“No, but when it started signing ‘Oh shit, oh shit, I’m going to die, oh shit,’ I knew it was you.”
Small Gods has to be the climax when Ohm has the eagle throw him at Vorbis. There’s nothing like hearing a god scream “Oh shit, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die…” THat whole ending sequence was wonderful. That, and when Death is hiding out with the soldiers and they keep passing him booze.
I can’t even begin to filter out specifics from the Night Watch books. Basically, any scene with Vimes in it is great, but they’re all just fantastic.
The “dread portal” scenes from Guards, Guards. They crack me up every time.
The scene in Soul Music where The Band With Rocks In plays at The Cavern gives me shivers down my spine. The waiting, the silence, and then the moment when the music rises up behind the players like a solid wall… woooh.
Of course, that same book also contains the most excellent “I’m mean and turf and I’m mean and turf and/I’m mean and turf and I’m mean and turf,/And me an’ my friends can walk towards you/with our hats on backwards in a menacing way,/Yo!”, i.e. “rat music”, as well as a reference to drunks in Helsinki, which is always worth a grin. 
Every book has wonderful moments (such as the roof-top chase of Greebo/The Phantom in Maskerade or Sergeant Dorfl in Feet of Clay). It just happens to be Soul Music I’m (re-re-re-re-)reading at the moment.
In Small Gods when Om decrees: “Let there be lettuces!”
I COULD LEND YOU A VERY FAST HORSE
probable misquote, but
probable misquote ahead, but the whole idea of a retro-phrenologist cracked me up, and the killer was
“This won’t hurt a bit” he said with perfect honesty.
Oops, sorry, about that. My mouse slipped.
Aro, That was from my favorite TP book, Guards!Guards!. It was when the Watch were on the roof tops and about to try to shoot the dragon.
One of the most enjoyable incidents in that book was where the people of the town try to get at Lady Sybils dragons and Vimes comes out of the house with a pet dragon under his arms…
“This is Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, the hottest dragon in the city. It could burn your head clean off.”
Then he goes into the whole Dirty Harry scenario.
Also from Guards!Guards!..
Thunder rolled… it rolled a six.
Anything to do with the Librarian.
When Mustrum Ridcully is trying out Bloody Stupid Johnson’s bathroom, while the librarian is playing the keyboards. You know what’s going to happen, and the build up is excellent, and yet, TP never actually revelas anything. Just Ridcully’s reaction, when they block off the bathroom again.
Not from a discworld novell I think, but a great TP quote.
Here are a few other fav’s:
“Let’s just say that if complete and utter chaos was lightning, he’d be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting ‘All gods are bastards’.”
“While I’m still confused and uncertain, it’s on a much higher plane, d’you see, and at least I know I’m bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.” Treatle nodded. “I hadn’t looked at it like that,” he said, “But you’re absolutely right. He’s really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance.
They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things.”
“It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever,” he said. “Have you thought of going into teaching?”
“Only one creature could have duplicated the expressions on their faces, and that would be a pigeon who has heard not only that Lord Nelson has got down off his column but has also been seen buying a 12-bore repeater and a box of cartridges.”
“While working his way along a wall he came to a huge door, which artistically portrayed a group of prisoners apparently being given a complete medical check-up (footnote: From a distance it did, anyway. Close to, no).”
“No-one would have believed, in the final years of the Century of the Fruitbat, that Discworld affairs were being watched keenly and impatiently by intelligences greater than Man’s, or at least much nastier; that their affairs were being scrutinised and studied as a man with a three-day appetite might study the All-You-Can-Gobble-For-A-Dollar menu outside Harga’s House of Ribs…”
“If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter.”
“It’s fifteen hundred miles to Ankh-Morpork,” he said. “We’ve got three hundred and sixty-three elephants, fifty carts of forage, the monsoon’s about to break and we’re wearing… we’re wearing… sort of things, like glass, only dark… dark glass things on our eyes…”
“The person on the other side was a young woman. Very obviously a young woman. There was no possible way that she could have been mistaken for a young man in any language, especially Braille.”
oh. There are so many more…