Great Fictional Characters: Rincewind

Continuing with the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge 2015

R is for Rincewind.

For those who haven't had the pleasure, Rincewind is a failed student at the Unseen University for wizards in Ankh-Morpork, and is often described by scholars as "the magical equivalent to the number zero". A better athlete than he is magician, he spends most of the Discworld books running away from various groups of people who want to kill him.

Because it's my birthday today, I'm a little short of time, so I thought I'd let the marvellous Sir Terry Pratchett do all the talking.

Here are some of my favourite Rincewind quotes from across the series.

"There are eight levels of wizardry on the Disc; after sixteen years Rincewind has failed to achieve even level one. In fact it is the consideration of some of his tutors that he is incapable even of achieving level zero, which most normal people are born at; to put it another way, it has been suggested that when Rincewind dies the average occult ability of the human race will actually go up by a fraction."

"He'd never asked for an exciting life. What he really liked, what he sought on every occasion, was boredom. The trouble was that boredom tended to explode in your face. Just when he thought he'd found it he'd be suddenly involved in what he supposed other people - thoughtless, feckless people - would call an adventure. And he'd be forced to visit many strange lands and meet exotic and colourful people, although not for very long because usually he'd be running. He'd seen the creation of the universe, although not from a good seat, and had visited Hell and the afterlife. He'd been captured, imprisoned, rescued, lost and marooned. Sometimes it had all happened on the same day."

"Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream in another forty-four."

“Preeminent among Rincewind’s talents was his skill in running away, which over the years he had elevated to the status of a genuinely pure science; it didn’t matter if you were fleeing from or to, so long as you were fleeing. It was flight alone that counted. I run, therefore I am; more correctly, I run, therefore with any luck I’ll still be.”


"Rincewind sighed. He liked lettuce. It was so incredibly boring. He had spent years in search of boredom, but had never achieved it. Just when he thought he had it in his grasp his life would suddenly become full of near-terminal interest. The thought that someone could voluntarily give up the prospect of being bored for fifty years made him feel quite weak. With fifty years ahead of him, he thought, he could elevate tedium to the status of an art form. There would be no end to the things he wouldn't do."

"Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a diseased mind.”

“Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad.”