Postal Quotes

Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?

Did I do anything last night that suggested I was sane?

Steal five dollars and you're a common thief. Steal thousands and you're either the government or a hero.

What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.

I commend my soul to any god that can find it.

Look, he said to his imagination, if this is how you're going to behave, I shan't bring you again.

Sometimes the truth is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from the totality of what is known.

Speak softly and employ a huge man with a crowbar.

People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as "Is this the laundry?" "How do you spell surreptitious?" and, on a regular basis, "Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.

The U.S. Postal Service should hire him for an ad campaign. If he were at the mailbox every time you sent a letter, no one would use email ever again.

There is always a choice." "You mean I could choose certain death?" "A choice nevertheless, or perhaps an alternative. You see I believe in freedom. Not many people do, although they will of course protest otherwise. And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.

And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.

You know how to pray, don’t you? Just put your hands together and hope.

In defiance of Miss Maccalariat I'd like to commit hanky-panky with you, Miss Adora Belle Dearheart... well, certainly hanky, and possibly panky when we get to know one another better.

If he'd been a hero, he would have taken the opportunity to say, "That's what I call sorted!" Since he wasn't a hero, he threw up.

There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died.

See a pin and pick it up, and, all day long, you'll have a pin.

The important thing is not to shout at this point, Vimes told himself. Do not…what do they call it…go postal? Treat this as a learning exercise. Find out why the world is not as you thought it was. Assemble the facts, digest the information, consider the implications. THEN go postal. But with precision.

Welcome to fear, said Moist to himself. It's hope, turned inside out. You know it can't go wrong, you're sure it can't go wrong...But it might.

If you kept changing the way people saw the world, you ended up changing the way you saw yourself.

Never promise to do the possible. Anyone could do the possible. You should promise to do the impossible, because sometimes the impossible was possible, if you could find the right way, and at least you could often extend the limits of the possible. And if you failed, well, it had been impossible.

ALWAYS REMEMBER that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.

What a place! What a situation! What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.

They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that, in the morning, it will be in a body that is going to be hanged.

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.

Soon to come in licorice, orange, cinnamon, and banana, but not strawberry, because I hate strawberries.

Words have power, you understand? It is in the nature of our universe. Our library itself distorts time and space on quite a grand scale. Well, when the Post Office started accumulating letters, it was storing words. In fact, what was being created was what we call a 'gevaisa', a tomb of living words.

Every organization needs at least one person who knows what's going on, and why it's happening, and who's doing it.

Raise the stakes! Always push your luck because no one else would push it for you.

The people who guard the rainbow don't like those who get in the way of the sun.

Moist was sure doctors keep skeletons around to cow patients. Nyer, nyer, we know what you look underneath ...

It was also a room full of books and made of books. There was no actual furniture; this is to say, the desk and chairs were shaped out of books. It looked as though many of them were frequently referred to, because they lay open with other books used as bookmarks.

Most investigators don't even know what the word means. You stop the cops from using informants and the only crimes they'd ever solve would be those by deranged postal workers who come to work once too often.

And the nice thing about a stake through the heart was that it also worked on non-vampires.

Startled, I flinched "What are you doing?" "Keeping you from going postal." "You're doing it wrong.

Do you understand what I'm saying?" shouted Moist. "You can't just go around killing people!" "Why Not? You Do." The golem lowered his arm. "What?" snapped Moist. "I do not! Who told you that?" "I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People," said the golem calmly. "I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be–– all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!" "No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.

Nothing-to-see is what most of the universe consists of.

Any ignorant fool can fail to turn someone else into a frog. You have to be clever to refrain from doing it when you know how easy it is.

A man can learn all of an opponent's weaknesses on that board,' said Gilt. 'Really?' said Vetinari, raising his eyebrows. 'Should not he be trying to learn his own?

I wonder if it's like this for mountain climbers, he thought. You climb bigger and bigger mountains and you know that one day one of them is going to be just that bit too steep. But you go on doing it, because it’s so-o good when you breathe the air up there. And you know you'll die falling.

But…but you can’t treat religion as a sort of buffet, can you? I mean, you can’t say yes please, I’ll have some of the Celestial Paradise and a helping of the Divine Plan but go easy on the kneeling and none of the Prohibition of Images, they give me wind. Its table d´hôte or nothing, otherwise…well, it would be silly.

The Post Office was the underdog, and an underdog can always find somewhere soft to bite.

true freedom is so terrible that only the mad or the divine can face it with open eyes.

People were strange like that. Steal five dollars and you were a petty thief. Steal thousands of dollars and you were either a government or a hero.

If it takes the entire army and navy to deliver a postal card in Chicago, that card will be delivered.

Mr Horsefry was a youngish man, not simply running to fat but vaulting, leaping and diving towards obesity. He had acquired at thirty an impressive selection of chins, and now they wobbled with angry pride.* * It is wrong to judge by appearances. Despite his expression, which was that of a piglet having a bright idea, and his mode of speech, which might put you in mind of a small, breathless, neurotic but ridiculously expensive dog, Mr Horsefry might well have been a kind, generous and pious man. In the same way, the man climbing out of your window in a stripy jumper, a mask and a great hurry might merely be lost on the way to a fancy-dress party, and the man in the wig and robes at the focus of the courtroom might only be a transvestite who wandered in out of the rain. Snap judgements can be so unfair.

You did what you were told or you didn't get paid, and if things went wrong it wasn't your problem. It was the fault of whatever idiot has accepted this message for sending in the first place. No one cared about you, and everyone at headquarters was an idiot. It wasn't your fault, no one listened to you. Headquarters had even started an Employee of the Month scheme to show how much they cared. That was how much they didn't care.

I was secretly convinced that with such a marvel one would be able to write anything, from novels to encyclopedias, and letters whose supernatural power would surpass any postal limitations--a letter written with that pen would reach the most remote corners of the world, even that unknowable place to which my father said my mother had gone and from where she would never return.

Did she go postal?” Russell grins at him, “You know, for pullin’ her portal on the island and sendin’ her to your safe house before the fight?” “Define postal?” Zephyr counters, his brows pulling together further. “Insanely angry,” Russell says. “Yes,” Zephyr nods his head adamantly, pointing at him. “She has not called me ‘sweetie’ since.” “Oooo,” Russell says, ducking his head and wrinkling his nose. “Doghouse.

Theres no stink more sorrorful than the stink of wet, burnt paper. It means: the end.

The only way to get something to turn up when you need it is to need it to turn up.

Where's the sense in promising to achive the achievable?

Welcome to fear, Moist said to himself. It's hope, turned inside out.

Pretty show, but you're wasting energy and time," Max said. "Mind if we get back to saving Horngate? You can go postal later.

-Why do you live in hotels? -It simplifies postal matters, it eliminates the nuisance of private ownership, it confirms me in my favorite habit-- the habit of freedom.

It was a little like stealing. It was exactly like stealing. It was, in fact, stealing. But there was no law against it because no one knew the crime existed, so is it really stealing if what’s stolen isn’t missed? And is it stealing if you’re stealing from thieves? Anyway, all property is theft, except mine.

Freedom may be mankind’s natural state, but so is sitting in a tree eating your dinner while it is still wriggling.

Oh, that's just Thud! That's easy!" yapped a voice. Both men turned to look at Horsefry, who had been made perky by sheer relief. "I used to play it when I was a kid," he burbled. It's boring. The dwarfs always win!" Gilt and Vetinari shared a look. It said: While I loathe you and every aspect of your personal philosophy to a depth unplummable by any line, I'll credit you at least with not being Crispin Horsefry.

And that noise! It was enough to make that happy mailman on Mr. Rogers go postal!

Stanley always followed the rules. All sorts of things could go wrong if you didn't. So far he'd done 1:Upon Discovery of the Fire, Remain Calm. Now he'd come to 2: Shout 'Fire!' in a Loud, Clear Voice. 'Fire!' he shouted, and then ticked off 2 with his pencil. Next was: 3: Endeavour to Extinguish Fire If Possible. Stanley went to the door and opened it. Flames and smoke billowed in. He stared at them for a moment, shook his head, and shut the door. Paragraph 4 said: If Trapped by Fire, Endeavour to Escape. Do Not Open Doors If Warm. Do Not Use Stairs If Burning. If No Exit Presents Itself Remain Calm and Await a) Rescue or b) Death.

His mouth said: "Would you like to have dinner tonight?" For just the skin of a second, Miss Dearheart was surprised, but not half as surprised as Moist. Then her natural cynicism reinflated. "I like to have dinner every night. With you? No. I have things to do. Thank you for asking." "No problem," said Moist, slightly relieved.

He had never imagined so clearly the consequences of mailing a letter—the impossibility of retrieving it from the iron mouth of the box; the inevitability if its steady progress through the postal system; the passing from bag to bag and postman to postman until a lone man in a van pulls up to the door and pushes a small pile through the letterbox. It seemed suddenly horrible that one's words could not be taken back, one's thoughts allowed none of the remediation of speaking face to face.

It was the heart of any scam or fiddle -- keep the punter uncertain, or, if he is certain, make him certain of the wrong thing.

What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.

There was a definite feel about Adora Belle Dearheart that a lid was only barely holding down an entire womanful of anger.

It was a thought that should not have been thoughted.

The mere fact you're delivering any will help, I'm sure," said Professor Pelc, smiling like a doctor telling a man not to worry, the disease is only fatal in 87 per cent of cases.

You have made quite a splash,” said Vetinari, smiling, “as the fish said to the man with the lead weight tied to his feet.

An imagination is a terrible thing to bring along.

He made a noise like an owl. Since Moist was no ornithologist, he did this by saying “woo woo.

So here I am, my affections torn between a postal service that never feeds me but can tackle a challenge and one that gives me free tape and prompt service but won't help me out when I can't remember a street name. The lesson to draw from this, of course, is that when you move from one country to another you have to accept that there are some things that are better and some things worse, and there is nothing you can do about it. That may not be the profoundest of insights to take away from a morning's outing, but I did get a free doughnut as well, so on balance I guess I'm happy.

The figure stopped to cough long and hard, making a noise like a wall being hit repeatedly with a bag of rocks. Moist saw that it had a beard of the short bristled type that suggested that its owner had been interrupted halfway through eating a hedgehog.

Ahh! They're all just pins!

Adora Belle fought back, and to make sure fought back even before she was attacked.

The greatest threat to a robust, autonomous civil society is the ever-growing Leviathan state and those like Obama who see it as the ultimate expression of the collective. Obama compounds the fallacy by declaring the state to be the font of entrepreneurial success. How so? It created the infrastructure - roads, bridges, schools, Internet - off which we all thrive. Absurd. We don't credit the Swiss postal service with the Special Theory of Relativity because it transmitted Einstein's manuscript to the Annalen der Physik.

Moist made a mental note: envelopes with a stamp already on, and a sheet of folded paper inside them: Instant Letter Kit, Just Add Ink! That was an important rule of any game: always make it easy for people to give you money.

Ubili su nam riječi koje smo smatrali svetima, prostituisali ih, učinili zastavama pod kojima marširaju gazeći čovjeka. Zar možemo više upotrebljavati riječi bratstvo, mir, solidarnost, sreća, jednakost, ljubav, sloboda. Otete su nam, prešle su u drugi tabor, postale su znamenje nasilja u ovom jedinom svijetu koji nas se tiče, jer drugog nemamo. Treba izmišljati druge riječi, a ne znamo kako i ne znamo koje. Ili da se ponovo sjetimo drevnih: zemlja, narod, življenje. Možda i ćutanje. A možda i: krik, koji neće niko čuti, jer niko nikoga više ne čuje i ne razumije...

You are aware, are you, that painting a few stars on a perfectly ordinary broomstick doesn’t mean it will get airborne?

That was an important rule of any game: always make it easy for people to give you money.

Nevertheless, he picked up a piece of smashed chair. It had splintered nicely. And the nice thing about a stake through the heart was that it also worked on non-vampires.

all freedom is limited, artificial, and therefore illusory, a shared hallucination at best. No sane mortal is truly free, because true freedom is so terrible that only the mad or the divine can face it with open eyes.

GENERALLY PEOPLE LIKE TO MOVE ON, Death hinted. THEY LOOK FORWARD TO AN AFTERLIFE. “I Will Stay Here, Please.” HERE? THERE’S NOTHING TO DO HERE, said Death. “Yes, I Know,” said the ghost of the golem. “It Is Perfect. I Am Free.

A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least he could tell the people he was their fault.

We appreciate your coming to us with a copy of your letter to your sister, but it was unnecessary. Your offense was known to us even before the letter's receipt by your sister. Effective as of September 15 the primary responsibility of our isle's new assistant chief postal inspector has been to scan all post for use of illegal letters of the alphabet, then to make nightly reports to the Council. A report has been put on file on your behalf, your official sentence to be forthwith in issuance.

Ahora la Maga no estaba en mi camino, y aunque conocíamos nuestros domicilios, cada hueco de nuestras dos habitaciones de falsos estudiantes en París, cada tarjeta postal abriendo una ventanita Branque o Ghirlandaio o Max Ernst contra las molduras baratas y los papeles chillones, aun así no nos buscaríamos en nuestras casas. Preferíamos encontrarnos en el puente, en la terraza de un café, en un cine-club agachados junto a un gato en cualquier patio del barrio latino. Andábamos sin buscarnos pero sabiendo que andábamos para encontrarnos.

You hardly know me and yet you invited me out on a date,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘Why?’ Because you called me a phoney, Moist thought. You saw through me straight away. Because you didn’t nail my head to the door with your crossbow. Because you have no small talk. Because I’d like to get to know you better, even though it would be like smooching an ashtray. Because I wonder if you could put into the rest of your life the passion you put into smoking a cigarette. In defiance of Miss Maccalariat I’d like to commit hanky-panky with you, Miss Adora Belle Dearheart… well, certainly hanky, and possibly panky when we get to know one another better. I’d like to know as much about your soul as you know about mine… He said: ‘Because I hardly know you.’ ‘If it comes to that, I hardly know you, either,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘I’m rather banking on that,’ said Moist. This got a smile. ‘Smooth answer. Slick. Where are we really eating tonight?

By April 1999, the plain was nearly filled, all the way to the foothills. But the fiercely independent residents refused to incorporate. A new town would only impose new rules and new taxes. The 100,000 new arrivals filled one continuous suburb with no town center: no main street, no town hall, town library, or town name. No one was sure what to call it. Littleton is a quiet suburb south of Denver where the massacre did not actually occur. Although the name would grow synonymous with the tragedy, Columbine lies several miles west, across the South Platte River, in a different county with separate schools and law enforcement. The postal system slapped “Littleton” onto a vast tract of seven hundred square miles, stretching way up into the foothills.

Winter arrived with December, and the world continued to suffer the loss of the Internet and most forms of communication. Supply chains were disrupted. The only mass form of personal communication was the letter, and postal workers were having their worst year ever, as they were actually meeded. Food was becoming scarcer and more expensive, as was fuel for vehicles and heating. Major cities experienced riots on a regular basis, spurred on by religious fervor and want. Civilization was on the brink of collapse.

Being an absolute ruler today was not as simple as people thought. At least, it was not simple if your ambitions included being an absolute ruler tomorrow. There were subtleties. Oh, you could order men to smash down doors and drag people off the dungeons without trial, but too much of that sort of thing lacked style and anyway was bad for business, habit-forming and very, very dangerous for your health. A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least they could tell the people he was their fault.

One can think about someone far away and one can hold on to someone nearby; everything else is beyond human power. Writing letters, on the other hand, means exposing oneself to the ghosts, who are greedily waiting precisely for that. Written kisses never arrive at their destination; the ghosts drink them up along the way. It is this ample nourishment which enables them to multiply so enormously. People sense this and struggle against it; in order to eliminate as much of the ghosts’ power as possible and to attain a natural intercourse, a tranquility of soul, they have invented trains, cars, aeroplanes—but nothing helps anymore: These are evidently inventions devised at the moment of crashing. The opposing side is so much calmer and stronger; after the postal system, the ghosts invented the telegraph, the telephone, the wireless. They will not starve, but we will perish.

On our first night in the house, we ripped up every square inch of the new green carpeting and dragged it to the curb. Where the carpet had been, we discovered a pristine oak plank floor that, as best as we could tell, had never suffered the scuff of a single shoe. We painstakingly sanded and varnished it to a high sheen. Then we went out and blew the better part of two week's pay for a handwoven Persian rug, which we unfurled in the living room in front of the fireplace. Over the months, we repainted every green surface and replaced every green accessory. The postal clerk's house was slowly becoming our own. Once we got the joint just right, of course, it only made sense that we bring home a large, four-legged roommate with sharp toenails, large teeth, and exceedingly limited English-language skills to start tearing it apart again.

The machine couldn’t be stopped and certainly shouldn’t be destroyed, the wizard said. Destroying the machine might well cause this universe to stop existing, instantly. On the other hand, the Post Office was filling up, so one day Chief Postal Inspector Rumbelow had gone into the room with a crowbar, had ordered all the wizards out, and belted the machine until things stopped whirring. The letters ceased, at least. This came as a huge relief, but nevertheless, the Post Office had its Regulations, and so the chief postal inspector was brought before Postmaster Cowerby and asked why he had decided to risk destroying the whole universe in one go. According to Post Office legend, Mr. Rumbelow had replied: “Firstly, sir, I reasoned that if I destroyed the universe all in one go, no one would know; secondly, when I walloped the thing the first time, the wizards ran away, so I surmised that unless they has another universe to run to they weren’t really certain; and lastly, sir, the bloody thing was getting on my nerves. Never could stand machinery, sir.

- Svako doba je teško, a svoje najteže - govorio je tiho. - Kao u davno pećinsko vrijeme, kad su poplave, divlje zvijeri, teške bolesti prijetile opstanku ljudi, evo danas stihija besmisla prijeti samom životu. Samo, teže neko ikakva slijepa stihija ranije. Danas služimo stvarima, ne znajući pravu vrijednost ničemu. Obezvrijedili su riječi kojima su se ljudi zaklanjali kao štitom i koje su nas hranile nadom. Ubili su nam riječi koje smo smatrali svetima, prostituisali ih, učinili zastavama pod kojima marširaju gazeći čovjeka. Zar možemo više upotrebljavati riječi bratstvo, mir, solidarnost, sreća, jednakost, ljubav, sloboda?! Otete su nam, prešle u drugi tabor, postale su znamenje nasilja u ovom jedinom svijetu koji se nas tiče, jer drugog nemamo. Treba izmišljati druge riječi, a ne znamo kako, i ne znamo koje. Ili da se ponovo sjetimo drevnih: zemlja, narod, življenje. Možda i: ćutanje. A možda i: krik, koji neće niko čuti, jer nikoga više ne čuje i ne razumije, ali važan je za nas, i jer je to jedino što još možemo učiniti u ovom svijetu bučnih mašina i agresivnog besmisla, hidrogenskih bombi i ideoloških rafala.

After death, you go on a very long way, that is going up. As you go, little by little, your features change. Your nose and ears retract in the flesh of your face like the little legs of a shellfish. Your fingers retract in your palm, your hands rebsorb in your shoulders. The same, your feet retract to your hips and you don’t walk anymore, you just float along a red brick wall, on which you leave your shadow like a streched disk. You are so round, that you become translucent and begin to see on all sides at once. While we are alive, we see through a postal box, but after death, we see around, with all our skin. Floating and looking at the the brick wall closer and closer, we get to a round place. There, in the middle, there is a cell, for we are in a mother’s womb. We enter the cell, and as the stages of our birth take place, we can see through the eyes of all beings, of the flea, of the rabbit, of the cat, the dog, the monkey, the man.. and with a little bit of luck, we can see through the eyes of the wonderful beings that follow the human being. A dead man is now looking at you through my eyes.

People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as “Is this the laundry?” “How do you spell surreptitious?” and, on a regular basis, “Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.

Not doing any magic at all was the chief task of wizards—not "not doing magic" because they couldn't do magic, but not doing magic when they could do and didn't. Any ignorant fool can fail to turn someone else into a frog. You have to be clever to refrain from doing it when you knew how easy it was. There were places in the world commemorating those times when wizards hadn't been quite as clever as that, and on many of them the grass would never grow again.

Miss Dearheart gave him a very brief look, and shook her head. There was movement under the table, a small fleshy kind of noise and the drunk suddenly bent forward, colour draining from his face. Probably only he and Moist heard Miss Dearheart purr: ‘What is sticking in your foot is a Mitzy “Pretty Lucretia” four-inch heel, the most dangerous footwear in the world. Considered as pounds per square inch, it’s like being trodden on by a very pointy elephant. Now, I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking, “Could she press it all the way through to the floor?” And, you know, I’m not sure about that myself. The sole of your boot might give me a bit of trouble, but nothing else will. But that’s not the worrying part. The worrying part is that I was forced practically at knifepoint to take ballet lessons as a child, which means I can kick like a mule; you are sitting in front of me; and I have another shoe . Good, I can see you have worked that out. I’m going to withdraw the heel now.’ There was a small ‘pop’ from under the table. With great care the man stood up, turned and, without a backward glance, lurched unsteadily away. ‘Can I bother you?’ said Moist. Miss Dearheart nodded, and he sat down, with his legs crossed. ‘He was only a drunk,’ he ventured. ‘Yes, men say that sort of thing,’ said Miss Dearheart.

I told him about my unsuccessful job hunting. He said it was all part of the pattern of economics - economic injustice. 'You take a young white boy. He can go though school and college with a real incentive. He knows he can make good money in any profession when he gets out. But can a Negro - in the South? No, I've seen many make brilliant grades in college. And yet when they come home in the summers to earn a little money, they have to do the most menial work. And even when they graduate it's a long hard pull. Most take postal jobs, or preaching or teaching jobs. This is the cream. What about the others , Mr. Griffin? A man knows no matter how hard he works , he's never going to quite manage...taxes and prices eat up more than he can earn. He can't see how he'll ever have a wife and children. The economic structure just doesn't permit it unless he's prepared to live down in poverty and have his wife work too. That's part of it. Our people aren't educated because they can't afford it or else they know education won't earn them the jobs it would a white men.

What was magic, after all, but something that happened at the snap of a finger? Where was the magic in that? It was mumbled words and weird drawings in old books, and in the wrong hands it was as dangerous as hell, but not one half as dangerous as it could be in the right hands. The universe was full of the stuff; it made the stars stay up and the feet stay down. But what was happening now . . . this was magical. Ordinary men had dreamed it up and put it together, building towers on rafts in swamps and across the frozen spines of mountains. They’d cursed and, worse, used logarithms. They’d waded through rivers and dabbled in trigonometry. They hadn’t dreamed, in the way people usually used the word, but they’d imagined a different world, and bent metal around it. And out of all the sweat and swearing and mathematics had come this . . . thing, dropping words across the world as softly as starlight.

Look, Bob, what part of this don't you understand, eh? It's a matter of style, okay? A proper brawl doesn't just happen. You don't just pile in, not anymore. Now, Oyster Dave here--put your helmet back on, Dave--will be the enemy in front, and Basalt, who, as we know, don't need a helmet, he'll be the enemy coming up behind you. Okay, it's well past knuckles time, let's say Gravy there has done his thing with the Bench Swipe, there's a bit of knife play, we've done the whole Chandelier Swing number, blah blah blah, then Second Chair--that's you, Bob--you step smartly between their Number Five man and a Bottler, swing the chair back over your head, like this--sorry, Pointy--and then swing it right back onto Number Five, bang, crash, and there's a cushy six points in your pocket. If they're playing a dwarf at Number Five, then a chair won't even slow him down, but don't fret, hang on to the bits that stay in your hand, pause one moment as he comes at you, and then belt him across both ears. They hate that, as Stronginthearm here will tell you. Another three points. It's probably going to be freestyle after that but I want all of you, including Mucky Mick and Crispo, to try for a Double Andrew when it gets down to the fist-fighting again. Remember? You back into each other, turn around to give the other guy a thumping, cue moment of humorous recognition, then link arms, swing round and see to the other fellow's attacker, foot or fist, it's your choice. Fifteen points right there if you get it to flow just right. Oh, and remember we'll have an Igor standing by, so if your arm gets taken off do pick it up and hit the other bugger with it, it gets a laugh and twenty points. On that subject, do remember what I said about getting everything tattooed with your name, all right? Igors do their best, but you'll be on your feet much quicker if you make life easier for him and, what's more, it's your feet you'll be on. Okay, positions, everyone, let's run through it again...