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The beast had forgotten the name ‘Orc’, but certainly remembered the name ‘Likely’, a name that had fed it so often, a name it had given birth to and eaten, a name that was football, the very heart of the beast. And here, on this broken field, it was a name to conjure with. ‘LIKELY! LIKELY! LIKELY!’ Hardly a grown man hadn’t seen him. He was the legend. Even after all these years, it was a name that cut through other loyalties. You told your grandchildren about him. You told them how he lay there bleeding and maybe how you dipped your handkerchief in his blood and kept it for a souvenir.

— Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett (Page 500)

He stopped dead rather than walk into the silvery knife that Glenda was holding in a not totally threatening way quite close to his throat. She had the satisfaction of seeing his Adam’s apple pop back up and down again like a sick yoyo.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said, lowering it. ‘I’ve always got a knife in my hand these days. We’ve been doing the pork. Very much like human flesh, pork, or so they say.’ She put her spare hand across his shoulders and said, ‘Probably not a good idea, spreading silly rumours, Mister Ottomy. You know how people can be so funny about that sort of thing. Nice of you to drop by and if you happen to be going past tomorrow I’ll see that you get a pie. Do excuse us. I have a lot of chopping up to do.’

He left at speed. Glenda, her heart pounding, looked at Juliet; her mouth made a perfect O.

‘What? What?’

‘I fort you was goin’ to stab ’im!’

‘I just happened to be holding a knife. You are holding a knife. We hold knives. This is a kitchen.’

‘D’you fink he’s goin’ to tell?’

‘He doesn’t really know anything.’ Eight inches, she thought. That’s as big as you can make a pie without a dish. How many pies could I make out of a weasel like Ottomy? The big mincer would make it easy. Ribcages and skulls must be a problem, though. Probably better, on the whole, to stick to pork.

But the thought blazed away at the back of her mind, never to become action but unfamiliar, exciting and oddly liberating.

— Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett (Page 146)

Now what would I do at this point if I were in a romantic novel? Glenda said to herself as the footsteps died away. Her reading had left her pretty much an expert on what to do if you were in a romantic novel, although one of the things that really annoyed her about romantic novels, as she had confided to Mr Wobble, was that no one did any cooking in them. After all, cooking was important. Would it hurt to have a pie-making sequence? Would a novel called Pride and Buns be totally out of the question? Even a few tips on how to make fairy cakes would help, and be pretty much in period as well. She’d be a little happier if, even, the lovers could be thrown into the mixing bowl of life. At least it would be some acknowledgement that people actually ate food.

— Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett (Page 352)

Thus from being her critic he grew to be her advocate. Cynical things he had uttered to himself about her; but no man can be always a cynic and live; and he withdrew them. The mistake of expressing them had arisen from his allowing himself to be influenced by general principles to the disregard of the particular instance.

But the reasoning is somewhat musty; lovers and husbands have gone over the ground before to-day. Clare had been harsh towards her; there is no doubt of it. Men are too often harsh with women they love or have loved; women with men. And yet these harshnesses are tenderness itself when compared with the universal harshness out of which they grow; the harshness of the position towards the temperament, of the means towards the aims, of today towards yesterday, of hereafter towards to-day.

— Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (80%)

Stranger, stories told in dreams are difficult— their meanings are not clear, and for people they are not realized in every detail. There are two gates for insubstantial dreams, one made of horn and one of ivory. Those which pass through the fresh-cut ivory deceive—the words they bring are unfulfilled. Those which come through the gate of polished horn, once some mortal sees them, bring on the truth.

— The Odyssey (Penguin Classics) by Homer

There she found Odysseus with bodies of the dead, spattered with gore and blood, like a lion moving on from gorging on a farmyard ox, his entire chest and both sides of his muzzle caked with fresh-spilt blood, a terrifying sight, that’s how Odysseus looked, with bloodstained feet and upper arms.

— The Odyssey (Penguin Classics) by Homer

Then there was a day. In a sense, it was the first day.

Om had been aware of the shepherd for some ti-for a while. The flock had been wandering closer and closer. The rains had been sparse. Forage was scarce. Hungry mouths propelled hungry legs further into the rocks, searching out the hitherto scorned clumps of sun-seared grass.

They were sheep, possibly the most stupid animal in the universe with the possible exception of the duck. But even their uncomplicated minds couldn't hear the voice, because sheep don't listen.

There was a lamb, though. It had strayed a little way. Om saw to it that it strayed a little further. Around a rock. Down the slope. Into the crevice.

Its bleating drew the mother.

The crevice was well hidden and the ewe was, after all, content now that she had her lamb. She saw no reason to bleat, even when the shepherd wandered about the rocks calling, cursing, and, eventually, pleading. The shepherd had a hundred sheep, and it might have been surprising that he was prepared to spend days searching for one sheep; in fact, it was because he was the kind of man prepared to spend days looking for a lost sheep that he had a hundred sheep.

The voice that was going to be Om waited.

It was on the evening of the second day that he scared up a partridge that had been nesting near the crevice, just as the shepherd was wandering by.

It wasn't much of a miracle, but it was good enough for the shepherd. He made a cairn of stones at the spot and, next day, brought his whole flock into the area. And in the heat of the afternoon he lay down to sleep-and Om spoke to him, inside his head.

Three weeks later the shepherd was stoned to death by the priests of Ur-Gilash, who was at that time the chief god in the area. But they were too late. Om already had a hundred believers, and the number was growing . . .

Only a mile away from the shepherd and his flock was a goatherd and his herd. The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different.

For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.

— Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (33%)

Glenda didn't like the word 'pointies', although it was a good description. Coming from Ottomy, though, it was an invitation to greasy conspiracy. But however you baked it, wizards were nobs, people who mattered, the movers and the shakers: and when people like that got interested in the doings of people who by definition did not matter, little people were about to be shaken, and shook.

— Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett (Page 145)

'I luvim.' 'You can't!' 'He saved my life!' 'That's no basis for a relationship! A polite thank you would have sufficed!'

— Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett (Page 143)

He felt so … old. So completed. He had wondered, in this incarnation, about every aspect of himself, about his worth, his beliefs, his meaning in a universe that seemed to have forgotten everything he’d learned and didn’t see the need to consult him as it was learning those harsh lessons for itself, over and over. He had lived through that. He had lived out the human life he had always envied. He had put aside the questions of his youth, about the mysterious victories of good over evil, as a conundrum that could never be solved. He had known lasting love, he had found peace, he had died a good death, to save others, already. What more could there be for him to learn? He would not be merely the sum of his memories, something to be collected in the Matrix, he would put a proper full stop at the end of his life, like … well, he’d been about to think ‘like humans did’, but … but he’d just discovered they didn’t do that, hadn’t he? He’d just discovered something … new.

This damned universe, mocking him at his moment of greatest fear.

[...]

The noises came again. They spoke of more than the people of the universe getting it wrong. They spoke of a memory it turned out he actually now had in his head once again, a memory he’d previously forgotten. He could hear her voice, now the machine had made him think of it.

‘Perhaps there’s just some bloke,’ said the voice of Bill in his memory, ‘wandering around, putting everything right when it goes wrong.’

He almost laughed. He almost laughed a laugh so big it nearly brought on the change on its own. Oh. Oh! He had learned another new thing, although really he had already known it. He was such … an idiot. A complete idiot—or at least, an idiot who had been completed by this realisation of his own stupidity. Because he had learned new things, had changed twice, in the space of the last few minutes.

Testimony was a human system. It would not save them all. It would not save them from pain and horror. It would not see where lives did not have to end, where change was possible. It was just something else instead of death. Someone still had to save people. Someone still had to help them. But … not someone who was pleased with the life he had completed.

He was satisfied. He had done the best he could. Change was required, because it always was. ‘Well,’ he whispered, ‘well, I suppose one more lifetime … won’t kill anyone.’ He felt the light start to play with his hands. He’d released it to do so. ‘Except me.’

— Doctor Who by Paul Cornell (94%)