[b]Terry Pratchett
Something Vimes had learned as a young guard drifted up from memory. If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you’re going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat.
They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.
So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.[/b]
More to the point, hope like hell you can stop him. Otherwise you’re just prolonging the fear.
Once we were blobs in the sea, and then fishes, and then lizards and rats and then monkeys, and hundreds of things in between. This hand was once a fin, this hand once had claws! In my human mouth I have the pointy teeth of a wolf and the chisel teeth of a rabbit and the grinding teeth of a cow! Our blood is as salty as the sea we used to live in! When we’re frightened, the hair on our skin stands up, just like it did when we had fur. We are history! Everything we’ve ever been on the way to becoming us, we still are.
Satyr could not have put it better if he tried. Only he wouldn’t stop there, would he?
I commend my soul to any god that can find it.
Pascal on steroids.
Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.
Paraphrasing Woody Allen as it were.
The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn’t sure it was worth all the effort.
Every twenty four hours in fact.
Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care.
Let’s just say he’s still working on it.