Good Omens

Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"You can't second-guess ineffability, I always say."

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

He was currently wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon were.

-- Crowley listens to his favourite rock group (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

He'd been particularly pleased with Manchester.

-- Crowley contemplating his achievements (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

The only time Crowley had bought petrol was once in 1967, to get the free James Bond bullet-hole-in-the-windscreen transfers, which he rather fancied at the time.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

He wondered reflectively what would happen if you asked a nun where the Gents was. Probably the Pope sent you a sharp note or something.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Humans suffering from a conflict of signals aren't the best people to be holding guns, especially when they've just witnessed a natural childbirth, which definitely looked an un-American way of bringing new citizens into the world.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Of course he was all in favour of Armageddon in general terms.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"You see a wile, you thwart. Am I right?"

-- Crowley the demon and Aziraphale the angel in conversation (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

On those occasions when the angel managed to get his mind into the twentieth century, it always gravitated to 1950.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

They drove back through the dawn, while the cassette player played J. S. Bach's Mass in B Minor, vocals by F. Mercury.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"Art thou a witch, viva espana?"

-- The Spanish Inquisition (Tadfield version) in action (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Anathema didn't only believe in ley-lines, but in seals, whales, bicycles, rainforests, whole grain in loves, recycled paper, white South Africans out of South Africa, and Americans out of practically everywhere down to and including Long Island.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

English Burger Lords managed to take any American fast food virtues (the speed with which your food was delivered, for example) and carefully remove them; your food arrived after half an hour, at room temperature, and it was only because of the strip of warm lettuce between them that you could distinguish the burger from the bun. The Burger Lord pathfinder salesmen had been shot 25 minutes after setting foot in France.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Shadwell hated all southerners and, by inference, was standing at the North Pole.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

The Kappamaki, a whaling research ship, was currently researching the question: How many whales can you catch in one week?

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

The kraken stirs. And ten billion sushi dinners cry out for vengeance.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"?" he said.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Madame Tracy had even removed most of the Major Arcana from her Tarot card pack, because their appearance tended to upset people.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

I DON'T CARE WHAT IT SAYS, said the tall biker in the helmet, I NEVER LAID A FINGER ON HIM.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Voodoo is a very interesting religion for the whole family, even those members of it who are dead.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"Jesus won't cut you off before you're through
With him you won't never get a crossed line,
And when your bill comes it'll all be properly itemised
He's the telephone repairman on the switchboard of my life.

The phone line to the saviour's always free of interference
He's in at any hour, day or night
And when you call J-E-S-U-S you always call toll-free
He's the telephone repairman on the switchboard of my life."

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

- "ALL YOU CAN HOPE FOR IS THE MERCY OF HELL."
- "Yeah?"
- "JUST OUR LITTLE JOKE."
- "Ngk," said Crowley.

-- Crowley in conversation with his superiors (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Death and Famine and War and Pollution continued biking towards Tadfield. And Grievous Bodily Harm, Cruelty To Animals, Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Given Them A Good Thumping but secretly No Alcohol Lager, and Really Cool People travelled with them.

-- The eight Bikers of the Apocalypse (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Thud. Thud. Thud. Splat.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"Did any of them kids have some space alien with a face like a friendly turd in a bike basket?"

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisement said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighbourhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: "Learn, guys."

-- Crowley is a demon, in case you don't know (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

R. P. Tyler was not, however, satisfied simply with being vouchsafed the difference between right and wrong. He felt it his bounden duty to tell the world.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"This isn't how I imagined it, chaps," said War. "I haven't been waiting for thousands of years just to fiddle around with bits of wire. It's not what you'd call dramatic. Albrecht Duerer didn't waste his time doing woodcuts of the Four Button-Pressers of the Apocalypse, I do know that."

-- Armageddon delayed by technical difficulties (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"I don't see why it matters what is written. Not when it's about people. It can always be crossed out."

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

In the Beginning It was a nice day.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

If you take the small view, the universe is just something small and round, like those water-filled balls which produce a miniature snowstorm when you shake them. Although, unless the ineffable plan is a lot more ineffable than it's given credit for, it does not have a large plastic snowman at the bottom.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

- "You're Hells Angels, then? What chapter are you from?"
- REVELATIONS, CHAPTER SIX.

-- Death in conversation with a biker (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

The lorry blocked the road. And the corrugated iron blocked the road. And a thirty-foot-high pile of fish blocked the road. It was one of the most effectively blocked roads the sergeant had ever seen.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Crowley was in Hell's bad books. Not that Hell has any other kind.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

God does not play dice with the universe: He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

It wasn't a dark and stormy night. It should have been, but there's the weather for you. For every mad scientist who's had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is complete and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who've sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Many phenomena - wars, plagues, sudden audits - have been advanced as evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man, but whenever students of demonology get together the M25 London orbital motorway is generally agreed to be among the top contenders for exhibit A.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Sister Mary headed through the night-time hospital with the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan and Lord of Darkness safely in her arms. She found a bassinet and laid him down in it. He gurgled. She gave him a tickle.

-- The antichrist is born (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Mr Young hadn't had to quiet a screaming baby for years. He'd never been much good at it to start with. He'd always respected Sir Winston Churchill, and patting small versions of him on the bottom had always seemed ungracious.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men -- one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf -- and it'll look up expectantly.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

A man threw himself through the window, a knife between his teeth, a Kalashnikov automatic rifle in one hand, a grenade in the other. "I glaim gis oteg in der gaing og der --" he paused. He tooke the knife out of his teeth and began again.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

- "Surely you have considered terrorist activity?"
There was another pause. Then the spokesman said, in the quiet tones of someone who has had enough and who is going to quit after this and raise chickens somewhere, "Yes, I suppose we must. All we need to do is find some terrorists who are capable of taking an entire nuclear reactor out of its can while it's running and without anyone noticing. It weighs about a thousand tons and is forty feet high. So they'll be quite strong terrorists. Perhaps you'd like to ring them up, sir, and ask them questions in that supercilious, accusatory way of yours."

-- The BBC interviews a nuclear spokesperson (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Jaime had never realised that trees made a sound when they grew, and no-one else had realised it either, because the sound is made over hundreds of years in waves of twenty-four hours from peak to peak. Speed it up, and the sound a tree makes is vrooom.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

... walking like a man carrying a thermos flask of something that might cause, if he dropped it or even thought about dropping it, the sort of explosion that impels grey-beards to make statements like "And where this crater is now, once stood the city of Wah-Shing-Ton", in SF B-movies.

-- Crowley gets out the Holy Water (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

She'd stopped reading the kind of women's magazine that talked about romance and knitting and started reading the kind of women's magazine that talked about orgasms, but apart from making a mental note to have one if ever the occasion presented itself she dismissed them as only romance and knitting in a new form.

-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)