How we cite our quotes: (Story.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"You see, one of the advantages of being dead is that one is released as it were from the hands of time and therefore I can see everything that has happened or will happen, all at the same time except that of course I now know that Time does not, for all practical purposes, exist." "That doesn't sound like a disadvantage," said Twoflower. "You don't think so? Imagine every moment being at one and the same time a distant memory and a nasty surprise and you'll see what I mean." (3.13.54-56)
Life after death might exist, or it might not; it might be great, or it might be terrible. But this whole life-during-death magic can take a walk. No thank you.
Quote #8
Ripples of paradox spread out across the sea of causality. Possibly the most important point that would have to be borne in mind by anyone outside the sum totality of the multiverse was that although the wizard and the tourist had indeed only recently appeared in an aircraft in midair, they had also at one and the same time been riding on that airplane in the normal course of things. (3.18.1-2)
Pratchett plays with theoretical physics and adds a supernatural element to them. Not that he had to try too hard. Sometimes physicists sound like wizards when they talk.
Quote #9
He had begun his career as a sailor on the Dehydrated Ocean in the heart of the Disc's driest desert. (Water on the Disc has an uncommon fourth state, caused by intense heat combined with the strange dessicating effects of octarine light; it dehydrates, leaving a silvery residue like free-flowing sand through which a well-designed hull can glide with ease. The Dehydrated Ocean is a strange place, but not so strange as its fish.) (4.3.6)
Pratchett again toys with real world—er, Roundworld—science to create something supernatural. All he needed to do was create a fourth state of matter—solid, water, gas, wild card (?)—and presto, it's that supernatural feeling. In other words, the supernatural almost always has its basis in the natural.