“The way to deal with an impossible task was to chop it down into a number of merely very difficult tasks, and break each one of them into a group of horribly hard tasks, and each of them into tricky jobs, and each of them...”
“There's some things we can't think because we don't know the words.”
“The important thing about being a leader is not being right or wrong but being certain. Of course it helps to be right as well, the Abbot conceeded.”
“How many books are there?" said Masklin.
"Hundreds! Thousands!"
"Do you know what they're all about?"
Gurder looked at him blankly. "Do you know what you're saying?" he said.
"No. But I want to find out."
"They're about everything! You'd never believe it! They're full of words even I don't understand!"
"Can you find a book which tells you how to understand words you don't understand?" said Masklin.
Gurder hesitated. "It's an intriguing thought," he said.”
“The monk solved his immediate problem by giving a little whimper and fainting.”
“ If you ask 10 nomes to push four will pull and two will say pardon”
“I will endeavor to clarify my statement," said the Thing. A few lights flashed.
"Jolly good," said Masklin.
"Big-fella Store him go Bang along plenty soon enough chop-chop?" said the Thing, hopefully.
The nomes watched one another's faces. There didn't seem to be any light dawning.
The Thing cleared it's throat again. "Do you know the meaning of the word 'destroyed'?" it said.
"Oh, yes," said Dorcas.
"That's what is going to happen to the Store. In twenty-one days.”
“I. Woe unto you, Ironmongri and Haberdasheri; woe unto you, Millineri and Del Icatessen; woe unto you, Young Fashions, and unto you, you the bandits of Corsetry. And even unto you, Stationeri.
II. For the Store is but a Place inside the Outside.
III. Woe unto you, for Arnold Bros (est. 1905) has opened the Last Sale. Everything Must Go.
IV. But they mocked him and said, You are an Outsider, You don't even Exist.
From The Book of Nome, Goods Inward v.I-IV”
“I think all we really want is to go home and be safe," said Masklin.
"Go home."
"That's right."
"And be safe."
"Yes.”
“I’m really not certain about threatening people with antelopes ...”
“They were astonished at what he had to tell them of human history – of war, slavery and prostitution. ‘It is because they have no Oyarsa,’ said one of the pupils. ‘It is because every one of them wants to be a little Oyarsa himself,’ said Augray. ‘They cannot help it,’ said the old sorn. ‘There must be rule, yet how can creatures rule themselves? Beasts must be ruled by hnau and hnau by eldila and eldila by Maleldil. These creatures have no eldila. They are like one trying to lift himself by his own hair – or one trying to see over a whole country when he is on a level with it – like a female trying to beget young on herself.’ Two”
“The language is perpetually in flux: it is a living stream, shifting, changing, receiving new strength from a thousand tributaries, losing old forms in the backwaters of time.”
“I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.”
“So I've started wearing sweatpants to bed because I really don't need Santa seeing me in my underwear.”
“Boj se ovna, boj se govna, a kada ću živjeti?”
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