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1 " If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards! "
― Terry Pratchett , The Color of Magic (Discworld, #1; Rincewind, #1)
2 " There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It's like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt with. In the paint of the washroom cubicle someone unknown had scratched: Aunt Lydia sucks. It was like a flag waved from a hilltop in rebellion. The mere idea of Aunt Lydia doing such a thing was in itself heartening. So now I imagine, among these Angels and their drained white brides, momentous grunts and sweating, damp furry encounters; or, better, ignominious failures, cocks like three-week-old carrots, anguished fumblings upon flesh cold and unresponding as uncooked fish. "
― Margaret Atwood , The Handmaid's Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)
3 " Captain Harcourt-Bruce was not only dashing, handsome, and brave, he was also rather romantic. The reappearance of magic in England thrilled him immensely. He was a great reader of the more exciting sort of history - and his head was full of ancient battles in which the English were outnumbered by the French and doomed to die, when all at once would be heard the sound of strange, unearthly music, and upon a hilltop would appear the Raven King in his tall, black helmet with it's mantling of raven-feathers streaming in the wind; he would gallop down the hillside on his tall, black horse with a hundred human knights and a hundred fairy knights at his back, and he would defeat the French by magic.That was Captain Harcourt-Bruce's idea of a magician. That was the sort of thing which he now expected to see reproduced on every battlefield on the Continent. So when he saw Mr Norrell in his drawing-room in Hanoversquare, and after he had sat and watched Mr Norrell peevishly complain to his footman, first that the cream in his tea was too creamy, and next that it was too watery - well, I shall not surprize you when I say he was somewhat disappointed. In fact he was so downcast by the whole undertaking that Admiral Paycocke, a bluff old gentleman, felt rather sorry for him and only had the heart to laugh at him and tease him very moderately about it. "
― Susanna Clarke , Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
4 " ...he is thinking about thoughts; so many thoughts piled up, such a quantity of half-remembered knowledge, so many emotions brought up from the well to spill out: the unrolling of history - a river into which you can't step twice, a collection of biographies end to end, a hilltop to survey the surrounding plains and so on - but also, more so, the anxieties prompted by the spooling of time and the awareness of its unstoppable nature; and random thoughts... "
― Justin Cartwright
5 " Let's just say that if complete and utter chaos were lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor and shouting 'All Gods are bastards. "
― Terry Pratchett