‘Why are we here?’
‘Well, some say that the Creator of the Universe made the Disc and everything on it, others say that it’s all a very complicated story involving the testicles of the Sky God and the milk of the Celestial Cow, and some even hold that we’re all just due to the total random accretion of probability particles. But if you mean why are we here as opposed to falling of the Disc, I haven’t the faintest idea. It’s probably all some ghastly mistake.’
(p 14)

—

Rincewind opened his eyes and lay for a moment looking up at the stuffed reptile. It was not the best thing to see when awakening from troubled dreams…
Magic! So that’s what it felt like! No wonder wizards didn’t have much truck with sex!
Rincewind knew what orgasms were, of course, he’d had a few in his time, sometimes even in company, but nothing in his experience even approximated to that tight, hot moment when every nerve in his body streamed with blue-white fire and raw magic had blazed forth from his fingers. It filled you and lifted you and you surfed down the rising, curling wave of elemental force. No wonder wizards fought for power…
(p 144)

—

The Ancient Ones, who know everything about all the universes and have smelt the smells of Calcutta and !Xrc-! and dauntocum Marsport, have agreed that even these fine examples of nasal poetry are mere limericks when set against the glory of the Ankh-Morpork smell.
[…]
There is only really one way to describe the effect the smell of Ankh-Morpork has on the visiting nose, and that is by analogy.
Take a tartan. Sprinkle it with confetti. Light it with strobe lights.
Now take a chameleon.
Put the chameleon on the tartan.
Watch it closely.
See?
(p 151)

—

All the cities were empty of most of their citizens and belonged to roaming gangs of crazed left-ear people.
‘Where do they all come from?’ said Twoflower, as they fled yet another mob.
‘Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘That’s what i’ve always thought. No one goes mad quicker than a totally sane person.’
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ said Bethan, ‘or if it makes sense, I don’t like it.’
(p 152)

—

There was no real need for torches. The Octavo filled the room with a dull, sullen light, which wasn’t strictly light at all but the opposite of light; darkness isn’t the opposite of light, it is simply its absence, and what was radiating from the book was the light that lies on the far side of darkness, the light fantastic.
(p 155)

—

Rincewind stared, and knew that there were far worse things than Evil. All the demons in Hell would torture your very soul, but that was precisely because they valued souls very highly; evil would always try to steal the universe, but at least it considered the universe worth stealing. But the grey world behind those empty eye would trample and destroy without even according its victims the dignity of hatred. It wouldn’t even notice them.

—

All from “The Light Fantastic” by Terry Pratchett, Colin Smythe Gerrards Cross. First published in 1986 by Colin Smythe Limited. 189 pages.