Making Money

It was sad, like those businessmen who came to work in serious clothes but wore colorful ties in a mad, desperate attempt to show there was a free spirit in there somewhere.

A weapon you held and didn't know how to use belonged to your enemy.

Watching a dog try to chew a large piece of toffee is a pastime fit for gods. Mr. Fusspot's mixed ancestry had given him a dexterity of jaw that was truly awesome. He somersaulted happily around the floor, making faces like a rubber gargoyle in a washing machine.

Students, eh? Love 'em or hate 'em, you can't hit them with a shovel!

I wouldn't trust you with a bucket of water if my knickers were on fire!

And what had he wanted? He'd never sat down to think about it. But mostly, he wanted yesterday to be different from today.

People don't like change. But make the change fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.

You get a wonderful view from the point of no return.

The only really sane person in there is Igor, and possibly the turnip. And I'm not sure about the turnip.

But what's worth more than gold?" "Practically everything. You, for example. Gold is heavy. Your weight in gold is not very much gold at all. Aren't you worth more than that?

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

He sighed. It had come to this. He was a responsible authority, and people could use terms like "core values" at him with impunity.

Whole new theories of money were growing here like mushrooms: in the dark and based on bullshit.

Mr Lipwig, there's a lady in the hall to see you and we've thanked her for not smoking three times and she's still doing it!

They were indeed what was known as 'old money', which meant that it had been made so long ago that the black deeds which had originally filled the coffers were now historically irrelevant. Funny, that: a brigand for a father was something you kept quiet about, but a slave-taking pirate for a great-great-great-grandfather was something to boast of over the port. Time turned the evil bastards into rogues, and rogue was a word with a twinkle in its eye and nothing to be ashamed of.

This looks like a job for inadvisably applied magic if ever I saw one.

You're not going to tell me they built fifty-foot-high killer golems, are you?" "Only a man would think of that. It's our job," said Moist. "If you don't think of fifty-foot-high killer golems first, someone else will.

Igor?' said Moist. 'You have an Igor?' Oh, yes,' said Hubert. 'That's how I get this wonderful light. They know the secret of storing lightning in jars! But don't let that worry you, Mr Lipspick. Just because I'm employing an Igor and working in a cellar doesn't mean I'm some sort of madman, ha ha ha!' Ha ha,' agreed Moist. Ha hah hah!,' said Hubert. 'Hahahahahaha!! Ahahahahahahhhhh!!!!!-' Bent slapped him on the back. Hubert coughed. Sorry about that, it's the air down here,' he mumbled.

Is that all, sir? Only we've got stuff to finish before our knocking-off time, you see, and if we stay late we have to make more money to pay our overtime, and if the lads is a bit tired we ends up earning the money faster'n we can make it, which leads to a bit of what I can only call a conundrum—" "You mean that if you do overtime you have to do more overtime to pay for it?" said Moist, still pondering how illogical logical thinking can be if a big enough committee is doing it. "That's right, sir," said Shady. "And down that road madness lies." "It's a very short road," said Moist, nodding.

There was no himself in himself.

Why are you always in such a hurry, Mr. Lipwig?” “Because people don’t like change. But make the change happen fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.

The dark moppets of dread played their paranoid hopscotch across Moist's inner eyeballs.

I'm an Igor, thur. We don't athk quethtionth." "Really? Why not?" "I don't know, thur. I didn't athk.

The gods help those who help themselves, and my word, didn't I help myself.

The Igor position on prayer is that it is nothing more than hope with a beat to it.

The dark organ music filled the Department of Post-Mortem Communications. Moist assumed it was all part of the ambience, although the mood would have been more precisely obtained if the tune it was playing did not appear to be Cantate and Fugue for someone Who Has Trouble with the Pedals.

He’d forgotten the ancient wisdom: take care, when you are closely observing, that you are not closely observed.

They are tragic,' said Vetinari, 'and we laugh at their tragedy as we laugh at our own. The painted grin leers out at us from the darkness, mocking our insane belief in order, logic, status, the reality of reality. The mask knows that we are born on the banana skin that leads only to the open manhole cover of doom, and all we can hope for are the cheers of the crowd.

Just because I'm employing an Igor and working in a cellar doesn't mean I'm some sort of madman, ha ha ha!