Going Postal tells the story of a skilled con artist forced to turn his life around to change the world for the better. In the opening scene, our troubled trickster ponders the meaning of life while seconds away from death at the gallows:

“What you had to do in this life was get past the pineapple, Moist told himself. It was big and sharp and knobbly, but there might be peaches underneath.”

What a wonderful little nugget of philosophy—a lesson in living from a fruit bowl! Only Pratchett could take a pineapple, add the word “knobbly”, and create a neatly-formed metaphor for overcoming hardship. Here’s what it teaches us: