Reaper Man

I regard the Discworld the way other people regard the bible. That might be blasphemous, but there it is. When I need comfort, when I need to laugh, when I need to think deeply, when I need to be reminded of all the beauty of humanity, I turn to the Discworld. These books soothe me. They empower me. They provide surety that it will all be okay, but that I have to do my part to make it okay.

Reaper Man is about Death. It has some incredible quotes that, in the wake of my husband's death, I needed to come back to. And in coming back to them I ended up re-reading the entire book.

 Anyway, here are a few of my favorite bits of this particular book:

Alone of all the creatures in the world, trolls believe that all living things go through Time backward. If the past is visible and the future is hidden, they say, then it means that you must be facing the wrong way.

People get exactly the wrong idea about belief. They think it works back to front. They think the sequence is, first object, then belief. In fact, it works the other way.

[T]hey believe that no one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away - until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life, they say, is only the core of their existence.

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