Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett
... it used to be so simple, once upon a time.
Because the universe was full of ignorance all around and the scientist panned through it like a prospector crouched over a mountain stream, looking for the gold of knowledge among the gravel of unreason, the sand of uncertainty and the little whiskery eight-legged swimming things of superstition.
Occasionally he would straighten up and say things like ‘Hurrah, I’ve discovered Boyle’s Third Law.’ And everyone knew where they stood. But the trouble was that ignorance became more interesting, especially big fascinating ignorance about huge and important things like matter and creation, and people stopped patiently building their little houses of rational sticks in the chaos of the universe and started getting interested in the chaos itself – partly because it was a lot easier to be an expert on chaos, but mostly because it made really good patterns that you could put on a t-shirt. (WA)
This is called the theory of narrative causality and it means that a story, once started, takes a shape. It picks up all the vibrations of all the other workings of that story that have ever been. This is why history keeps on repeating all the time. (WA)
Forever didn’t seem to last as long these days as once it did. (WA)
Fairy godmothers develop a very deep understanding about human nature, which makes the good ones kind and the bad ones powerful. (WA)
Artists and writers have always had a rather exaggerated idea about what goes on at a witches’ sabbat. This comes from spending too much time in small rooms with the curtains drawn, instead of getting out in the healthy fresh air. (WA)
Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman. (WA)
You’re average witch is not, by nature, a social animal as far as other witches are concerned. There’s a conflict of dominant personalities. There’s a group of ringleaders without a ring. There’s the basic unwritten rule of witchcraft, which is ‘Don’t do what you will, do what I say’. The natural size of a coven is one. (WA)
Grammer Bevis wrinkled her forehead.
‘Magrat?’ she said. She tried to get a mental picture of the Ramtops’ youngest witch and recalled – well, not a face, just a slightly watery-eyed expression of hopeless goodwill wedged between a body like a maypole and hair like a haystack after a gale. A relentless doer of good works. A worrier. The kind of person who rescued small lost baby birds and cried when they died, which is the function kind old Mother Nature usually reserves for small lost baby birds. (WA)
‘Nothing wrong with being self-assertive,’ said Nanny. ‘Self-asserting’s what witching’s all about.’
‘I never said there was anything wrong with it,’ said Granny. ‘I told her there was nothing wrong with it. You can be as self-assertive as you like, I said, just so long as you do what you’re told.’ (WA)
‘By gor’, that’s a bloody enormous cat.’
‘It’s a lion,’ said Granny Weatherwax, looking at the stuffed head over the fireplace.
‘Must’ve hit the wall at a hell of a speed, whatever it was,’ said Nanny Ogg.
‘Someone killed it,’ said Granny Weatherwax, surveying the room.
‘Should think so,’ said Nanny. ‘If I’d seen something like that eatin’ its way through the wall I’d of hit it myself with a poker.’ (WA)
Magrat would be the first to admit that she had an open mind. It was as open as a field, as open as the sky. No mind could be more open without special surgical implements. And she was always waiting for something to fill it up. (WA)
It’s a strange thing about determined seekers-after-wisdom that, no matter where they happen to be, they’ll always seek that wisdom which is a long way off. Wisdom is one of the few things that look bigger the further away it is. (WA)
Ramtop people believed the Ogg feud was a blessing. The thought of them turning their immense energy on the world in general was a terrible one. Fortunately, there was no-one an Ogg would rather fight than another Ogg. It was family. (WA)
‘Look,’ said Magrat desperately, ‘why don’t I go by myself?’
‘‘Cos you ain’t experienced at fairy godmothering,’ said Granny Weatherwax.
This was too much even for Magrat’s generous soul.
‘Well, nor are you,’ she said.
‘That’s true,’ Granny conceded. ‘But the point is…the point is…the point is we’ve not been experienced for a lot longer than you.’ (WA)
It was one of the weak spots of Granny Weatherwax’s otherwise well-developed character that she’d never bothered to get the hang of steering things. It was alien to her nature. She took the view that it was her job to move and the rest of the world to arrange itself so that she arrived at her destination. (WA)
To the rest of the world he was an enormous tomcat, a parcel of incredible indestructible force in a skin that looked less like a fur than a piece of bread that had been left in a damp place for a fortnight. Strangers often took pity on him because his ears were non-existent and his face looked as though a bear had camped on it. (WA)
Greebo turned upon Granny Weatherwax a yellow-eyed stare of self-satisfied malevolence, such as cats always reserve for people who don’t like them, and purred. Greebo was possibly the only cat who could snigger in purr. (WA)
‘Our Sean read to me in the almanac where there’s all these fearsome wild beasts in foreign parts,’ he whispered. ‘Huge hairy things that leap out on travellers, it said. I’d hate to think what’d happen if they leapt out on mum and Granny.’
Magrat looked up into his big red face.
‘You will see no harm comes to them, won’t you?’ said Jason.
‘Don’t you worry,’ she said, hoping that he needn’t. ‘I’ll do my best.’
Jason nodded. ‘Only it said in the almanac that some of them were nearly extinct anyway,’ he said. (WA)
Infinity contains more than you think.
Everything, for a start. (WA)
In the dim light she could see Granny’s face which seemed to be suggesting that if Magrat was at her wits’ end, it was a short stroll. (WA)
‘I know all about folk songs. Hah! You think you’re listenin’ to a nice song about…about cuckoos and fiddlers and nightingales and whatnot, and then it turns out to be about…about something else entirely,’ she added darkly. ‘You can’t trust folk songs. They always sneak up on you.’ (WA)
Magrat unfolded a map. It was creased, damp, and the pencil had run. She pointed cautiously to a smudged area.
‘I think we’re here,’ she said.
‘My word,’ said Nanny Ogg, whose grasp of the principles of cartography was even shakier than Granny’s. ‘Amazing how we can all fit on that little bit of paper.’ (WA)
…anyone who spent much time in the company of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg got used to being stared at; they were the kind of people that filled every space from edge to edge. (WA)
… people are riddled with Doubt. It is the engine that drives them through their lives. It is the elastic band in the little model aeroplane of their soul, and they spend their time winding it up into knots. Early morning is the worst time – there’s that little moment of panic in case You have drifted away in the night and something else has moved in. This never happened to Granny Weatherwax. She went straight from fast asleep to instant operation on all six cylinders. She never needed to find herself because she always knew who was doing the looking. (WA)
‘It’s far too early in the morning for it be early in the morning,’ she said. (WA)
Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave and the crypt, but have never managed it from the cat. (WA)
Not for the first time in the history of the universe, someone for whom communication normally came as effortlessly as a dream was struck for inspiration when faced with a few lines on the back of a card. (WA)
Nanny Ogg sent a number of cards home to her family, not a single one of which got back before she did. This is traditional, and happens everywhere in the universe. (WA)
Granny Weatherwax’s approach to foreign tongues was to repeat herself loudly and slowly. (WA)
‘And I don’t hold with all this giving things funny names so people don’t know what they’re eating,’ said Granny, determined to explore the drawbacks of international cookery to the full. ‘I like stuff that tells you plain what it is, like ... well ... Bubble and Squeak, or ... or...’
‘Spotted Dick,’ said Nanny absently. (WA)
‘Words have sex in foreign parts,’ said Nanny hopefully. (WA)
The Yen Buddhists are the richest religious sect in the universe. They hold that the accumulation of money is a great evil and burden to the soul. They therefore, regardless of personal hazard, see it as their unpleasant duty to acquire as much as possible in order to reduce the risk to innocent people. (WA)
‘You’d have to go a long day’s journey to find someone basically nastier than Esme,’ said Nanny Ogg, ‘and this is me sayin’ it. She knows exactly what she is. She was born to be good and she don’t like it.’ (WA)
‘You can’t make happiness ...’
Granny Weatherwax stared at the distant city.
‘All you can do,’ she said, ‘is make an ending.’ (WA)
But it was miraculous, the dwarf bread. No-one ever went hungry when they had some dwarf bread to avoid. You only had to look at it for a moment, and instantly you could think of dozens of things you’d rather eat. Your boots, for example. Mountains. Raw sheep. Your own foot. (WA)
Magrat leaned down and set her face in the idiot grimace generally used by adults who’d love to be good with children and don’t stand a dog’s chance of ever achieving it. (WA)
Magrat liked to think she was good with children, and worried that she wasn’t. She didn’t like them very much, and worried about this too. Nanny Ogg seemed to be effortlessly good with children by alternately and randomly giving them either a sweet or a thick ear, while Granny Weatherwax ignored them from most of the time and that seemed to work just as well. Whereas Magrat cared. It didn’t seem fair. (WA)
… she was definitely feeling several twinkles short of a glitter and suffering a slight homesick-tinged dip in her usual sunny nature. People didn’t hit you over the head with farmhouses back home. (WA)
‘Sounds like “Ding-dong, dingdong”.’
‘That’s a dwarf song all right,’ said Nanny. ‘They’re the only people who can make a hiho last all day.’ (WA)
Magrat might always be trying to find herself, but Granny didn’t even understand the idea of the search. (WA)
‘Baths is unhygienic,’ Granny declared. ‘You know I’ve never agreed with baths. Sittin’ around in your own dirt like that.’ (WA)
‘I don’t mind criticism,’ said Granny. ‘You know me. I’ve never been one to take offence at criticism. No-one could say I’m the sort to take offence at criticism -’
‘Not twice, anyway,’ said Nanny. (WA)
Nanny Ogg knew how to start spelling ‘banana’, but didn’t know how you stopped. (WA)
Magrat bought occult jewellery as a sort of distraction from being Magrat. She had three large boxes of the stuff and was still exactly the same person. (WA)
Granny Weatherwax did not believe in atmospheres. She did not believe in psychic auras. Being a witch, she’d always thought, depended more on what you didn’t believe. (WA)
People like Nanny Ogg turn up everywhere. It’s as if there’s some special morphic generator dedicated to the production of old women who like a laugh and aren’t averse to the odd pint, especially of some drink normally sold in very small glasses. You find them all over the place, often in pairs. (WA)
Nanny Ogg quite liked cooking, provided there were other people around to do things like chop up the vegetables and wash the dishes afterwards. (WA)
Nanny Ogg would try anything once. Some things she’d try several thousand times. (WA)
… it wasn’t the wearing of the hats that counted so much as having one to wear. Every trade, every craft had its hat. That’s why kings had hats. Take the crown off a king and all you had was someone good at having a weak chin and waving to people. Hats had power. Hats were important. (WA)
‘You always used to say I was wanton, when we was younger,’ said Nanny.
Granny hesitated, caught momentarily off balance. Then she waved a hand irritably.
‘You was, of course,’ she said dismissively. ‘But you never used magic for it, did you?’
‘Din’t have to,’ said Nanny happily. ‘An off-the-shoulder dress did the trick most of the time.’
‘Right off the shoulder and onto the grass, as I recall,’ said Granny. (WA)
It had taken many years under the tutelage of Granny Weatherwax for Magrat to learn that the common kitchen breadknife was better than the most ornate of magical knives. It could do all that the magical knife could do, plus you could also use it to cut bread. (WA)
It is a universal fact that any innocent comment made by any recently-married young member of any workforce is an instant trigger for coarse merriment among his or her older and more cynical colleagues. (WA)
For wolves and pigs and bears, thinking that they’re human is a tragedy. For a cat, it’s an experience. (WA)
‘… a bit of hussing never did anyone any harm.’ (WA)
‘My name’s Casanunda,’ he said. ‘I’m reputed to be the world’s greatest lover. What do you think?’
Nanny Ogg looked him up and down or, at least, down and further down.
‘You’re a dwarf,’ she said.
‘Size isn’t important.’ (WA)
‘How about a date?’
‘How old do you think I am?’ said Nanny.
Casanunda considered. ‘All right, then. How about a prune?’ (WA)
The wages of sin are death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays. (WA)
Granny Weatherwax wouldn’t know what a pattern of quantum inevitability was if she found it eating her dinner. If you mentioned the words ‘paradigm of space-time’ to her she’d just say ‘What?’ But that didn’t mean she was ignorant. It just meant that she didn’t have truck with words, especially gibberish. (WA)
Stories are not, on the whole, interested in swineherds who remain swineherds and poor and humble shoe-makers whose destiny is to die slightly poorer and much humbler. (WA)
…when all people had was practically nothing, then anything could be almost everything. (WA)
The invisible people knew that happiness is not the natural state of mankind, and is never achieved from the outside in. (WA)
Genuan cooking, like the best cooking everywhere in the multiverse, has been evolved by people who had to make desperate use of ingredients their masters didn’t want. No-one would even try a bird’s nest unless they had to. Only hunger would make a man taste his first alligator. No-one would eat a shark’s fin if they were allowed to eat the rest of the shark. (WA)
Cats gravitate to kitchens like rocks gravitate to gravity. (WA)
‘He’s a frog,’ said Granny flatly.
‘But only on the inside,’ said Lily.
‘Inside’s where it counts,’ said Granny.
‘Outside’s quite important, mind’ said Nanny. (WA)
‘The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy.’ (WA)
‘You can’t go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world. Otherwise it’s just a cage.’ (WA)
‘Don’t you talk to me about progress. Progress just means bad things happen faster.’ (WA)
‘I’m a world-famous liar.’
‘Is that true?’
‘No.’
‘What about you being the world’s greatest lover?’
There was silence for a while.
‘Well maybe I’m only No. 2,’ said Casanunda. ‘But I try harder.’ (WA)
Cats are like witches. They don’t fight to kill, but to win. There is a difference. There’s no point in killing an opponent. That way, they won’t know they’ve lost, and to be real winner you have to have an opponent who is beaten and knows it. There’s no triumph over a corpse, but a beaten opponent, who will remain beaten every day of the remainder of their sad and wretched life, is something to treasure. (WA)
…it is almost impossible to develop decent swordsmanship when you seem to have run into a foodmixer that is biting your ears off. (WA)
‘You can’t make things right by magic. You can only stop making them wrong.’ (WA)
‘We’re her godmothers,’ said Granny.
‘That’s right,’ said Nanny Ogg.
‘We’ve got a want too,’ said Magrat.
‘But you hate godmothers, Mistress Weatherwax,’ said Mrs Gogol.
‘We’re the other kind,’ said Granny. ‘We’re the kind that give people what they know they really need, not what we think they ought to want.’ (WA)
‘I don’t want to hurt you, Mistress Weatherwax,’ said Mrs. Gogol.
‘That’s good,’ said Granny. ‘I don’t want you to hurt me either.’ (WA)
‘Will she live happily ever after?’ he said.
NOT FOREVER. BUT PERHAPS FOR LONG ENOUGH. (WA)
The trouble with witches is that they’ll never run away from things they really hate.
And the trouble with small furry animals in a corner is that, just occasionally, one of them’s a mongoose. (WA)
A good cook is always the first one into the kitchen every morning and the last one to go home at night. (WA)
Humanity’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there. (WA)
...they say travelin broadens the mind, I reckon I could pull mine out my ears now and knot it under my chin... (WA)
Granny looked at the rising sun poking through the mists.
‘Good and bad is tricky,’ she said. ‘I ain’t too certain about where people stand. P’rhaps what matters is which way you face.’ (WA)
‘It’s not staying in the same place that’s the problem,’ said Nanny, ‘it’s not letting your mind wander.’ (WA)
Nanny kicked her red boots together idly.
‘Well, I suppose there’s no place like home,’ she said.
‘No,’ said Granny Weatherwax, still looking thoughtful. ‘No. There’s a billion places like home. But only one of ‘em’s where you live.’
‘So, we’re going back?’ said Magrat.
‘Yes.’
But they went the long way, and saw the elephant. (WA)
Because the universe was full of ignorance all around and the scientist panned through it like a prospector crouched over a mountain stream, looking for the gold of knowledge among the gravel of unreason, the sand of uncertainty and the little whiskery eight-legged swimming things of superstition.
Occasionally he would straighten up and say things like ‘Hurrah, I’ve discovered Boyle’s Third Law.’ And everyone knew where they stood. But the trouble was that ignorance became more interesting, especially big fascinating ignorance about huge and important things like matter and creation, and people stopped patiently building their little houses of rational sticks in the chaos of the universe and started getting interested in the chaos itself – partly because it was a lot easier to be an expert on chaos, but mostly because it made really good patterns that you could put on a t-shirt. (WA)
This is called the theory of narrative causality and it means that a story, once started, takes a shape. It picks up all the vibrations of all the other workings of that story that have ever been. This is why history keeps on repeating all the time. (WA)
Forever didn’t seem to last as long these days as once it did. (WA)
Fairy godmothers develop a very deep understanding about human nature, which makes the good ones kind and the bad ones powerful. (WA)
Artists and writers have always had a rather exaggerated idea about what goes on at a witches’ sabbat. This comes from spending too much time in small rooms with the curtains drawn, instead of getting out in the healthy fresh air. (WA)
Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman. (WA)
You’re average witch is not, by nature, a social animal as far as other witches are concerned. There’s a conflict of dominant personalities. There’s a group of ringleaders without a ring. There’s the basic unwritten rule of witchcraft, which is ‘Don’t do what you will, do what I say’. The natural size of a coven is one. (WA)
Grammer Bevis wrinkled her forehead.
‘Magrat?’ she said. She tried to get a mental picture of the Ramtops’ youngest witch and recalled – well, not a face, just a slightly watery-eyed expression of hopeless goodwill wedged between a body like a maypole and hair like a haystack after a gale. A relentless doer of good works. A worrier. The kind of person who rescued small lost baby birds and cried when they died, which is the function kind old Mother Nature usually reserves for small lost baby birds. (WA)
‘Nothing wrong with being self-assertive,’ said Nanny. ‘Self-asserting’s what witching’s all about.’
‘I never said there was anything wrong with it,’ said Granny. ‘I told her there was nothing wrong with it. You can be as self-assertive as you like, I said, just so long as you do what you’re told.’ (WA)
‘By gor’, that’s a bloody enormous cat.’
‘It’s a lion,’ said Granny Weatherwax, looking at the stuffed head over the fireplace.
‘Must’ve hit the wall at a hell of a speed, whatever it was,’ said Nanny Ogg.
‘Someone killed it,’ said Granny Weatherwax, surveying the room.
‘Should think so,’ said Nanny. ‘If I’d seen something like that eatin’ its way through the wall I’d of hit it myself with a poker.’ (WA)
Magrat would be the first to admit that she had an open mind. It was as open as a field, as open as the sky. No mind could be more open without special surgical implements. And she was always waiting for something to fill it up. (WA)
It’s a strange thing about determined seekers-after-wisdom that, no matter where they happen to be, they’ll always seek that wisdom which is a long way off. Wisdom is one of the few things that look bigger the further away it is. (WA)
Ramtop people believed the Ogg feud was a blessing. The thought of them turning their immense energy on the world in general was a terrible one. Fortunately, there was no-one an Ogg would rather fight than another Ogg. It was family. (WA)
‘Look,’ said Magrat desperately, ‘why don’t I go by myself?’
‘‘Cos you ain’t experienced at fairy godmothering,’ said Granny Weatherwax.
This was too much even for Magrat’s generous soul.
‘Well, nor are you,’ she said.
‘That’s true,’ Granny conceded. ‘But the point is…the point is…the point is we’ve not been experienced for a lot longer than you.’ (WA)
It was one of the weak spots of Granny Weatherwax’s otherwise well-developed character that she’d never bothered to get the hang of steering things. It was alien to her nature. She took the view that it was her job to move and the rest of the world to arrange itself so that she arrived at her destination. (WA)
To the rest of the world he was an enormous tomcat, a parcel of incredible indestructible force in a skin that looked less like a fur than a piece of bread that had been left in a damp place for a fortnight. Strangers often took pity on him because his ears were non-existent and his face looked as though a bear had camped on it. (WA)
Greebo turned upon Granny Weatherwax a yellow-eyed stare of self-satisfied malevolence, such as cats always reserve for people who don’t like them, and purred. Greebo was possibly the only cat who could snigger in purr. (WA)
‘Our Sean read to me in the almanac where there’s all these fearsome wild beasts in foreign parts,’ he whispered. ‘Huge hairy things that leap out on travellers, it said. I’d hate to think what’d happen if they leapt out on mum and Granny.’
Magrat looked up into his big red face.
‘You will see no harm comes to them, won’t you?’ said Jason.
‘Don’t you worry,’ she said, hoping that he needn’t. ‘I’ll do my best.’
Jason nodded. ‘Only it said in the almanac that some of them were nearly extinct anyway,’ he said. (WA)
Infinity contains more than you think.
Everything, for a start. (WA)
In the dim light she could see Granny’s face which seemed to be suggesting that if Magrat was at her wits’ end, it was a short stroll. (WA)
‘I know all about folk songs. Hah! You think you’re listenin’ to a nice song about…about cuckoos and fiddlers and nightingales and whatnot, and then it turns out to be about…about something else entirely,’ she added darkly. ‘You can’t trust folk songs. They always sneak up on you.’ (WA)
Magrat unfolded a map. It was creased, damp, and the pencil had run. She pointed cautiously to a smudged area.
‘I think we’re here,’ she said.
‘My word,’ said Nanny Ogg, whose grasp of the principles of cartography was even shakier than Granny’s. ‘Amazing how we can all fit on that little bit of paper.’ (WA)
…anyone who spent much time in the company of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg got used to being stared at; they were the kind of people that filled every space from edge to edge. (WA)
… people are riddled with Doubt. It is the engine that drives them through their lives. It is the elastic band in the little model aeroplane of their soul, and they spend their time winding it up into knots. Early morning is the worst time – there’s that little moment of panic in case You have drifted away in the night and something else has moved in. This never happened to Granny Weatherwax. She went straight from fast asleep to instant operation on all six cylinders. She never needed to find herself because she always knew who was doing the looking. (WA)
‘It’s far too early in the morning for it be early in the morning,’ she said. (WA)
Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave and the crypt, but have never managed it from the cat. (WA)
Not for the first time in the history of the universe, someone for whom communication normally came as effortlessly as a dream was struck for inspiration when faced with a few lines on the back of a card. (WA)
Nanny Ogg sent a number of cards home to her family, not a single one of which got back before she did. This is traditional, and happens everywhere in the universe. (WA)
Granny Weatherwax’s approach to foreign tongues was to repeat herself loudly and slowly. (WA)
‘And I don’t hold with all this giving things funny names so people don’t know what they’re eating,’ said Granny, determined to explore the drawbacks of international cookery to the full. ‘I like stuff that tells you plain what it is, like ... well ... Bubble and Squeak, or ... or...’
‘Spotted Dick,’ said Nanny absently. (WA)
‘Words have sex in foreign parts,’ said Nanny hopefully. (WA)
The Yen Buddhists are the richest religious sect in the universe. They hold that the accumulation of money is a great evil and burden to the soul. They therefore, regardless of personal hazard, see it as their unpleasant duty to acquire as much as possible in order to reduce the risk to innocent people. (WA)
‘You’d have to go a long day’s journey to find someone basically nastier than Esme,’ said Nanny Ogg, ‘and this is me sayin’ it. She knows exactly what she is. She was born to be good and she don’t like it.’ (WA)
‘You can’t make happiness ...’
Granny Weatherwax stared at the distant city.
‘All you can do,’ she said, ‘is make an ending.’ (WA)
But it was miraculous, the dwarf bread. No-one ever went hungry when they had some dwarf bread to avoid. You only had to look at it for a moment, and instantly you could think of dozens of things you’d rather eat. Your boots, for example. Mountains. Raw sheep. Your own foot. (WA)
Magrat leaned down and set her face in the idiot grimace generally used by adults who’d love to be good with children and don’t stand a dog’s chance of ever achieving it. (WA)
Magrat liked to think she was good with children, and worried that she wasn’t. She didn’t like them very much, and worried about this too. Nanny Ogg seemed to be effortlessly good with children by alternately and randomly giving them either a sweet or a thick ear, while Granny Weatherwax ignored them from most of the time and that seemed to work just as well. Whereas Magrat cared. It didn’t seem fair. (WA)
… she was definitely feeling several twinkles short of a glitter and suffering a slight homesick-tinged dip in her usual sunny nature. People didn’t hit you over the head with farmhouses back home. (WA)
‘Sounds like “Ding-dong, dingdong”.’
‘That’s a dwarf song all right,’ said Nanny. ‘They’re the only people who can make a hiho last all day.’ (WA)
Magrat might always be trying to find herself, but Granny didn’t even understand the idea of the search. (WA)
‘Baths is unhygienic,’ Granny declared. ‘You know I’ve never agreed with baths. Sittin’ around in your own dirt like that.’ (WA)
‘I don’t mind criticism,’ said Granny. ‘You know me. I’ve never been one to take offence at criticism. No-one could say I’m the sort to take offence at criticism -’
‘Not twice, anyway,’ said Nanny. (WA)
Nanny Ogg knew how to start spelling ‘banana’, but didn’t know how you stopped. (WA)
Magrat bought occult jewellery as a sort of distraction from being Magrat. She had three large boxes of the stuff and was still exactly the same person. (WA)
Granny Weatherwax did not believe in atmospheres. She did not believe in psychic auras. Being a witch, she’d always thought, depended more on what you didn’t believe. (WA)
People like Nanny Ogg turn up everywhere. It’s as if there’s some special morphic generator dedicated to the production of old women who like a laugh and aren’t averse to the odd pint, especially of some drink normally sold in very small glasses. You find them all over the place, often in pairs. (WA)
Nanny Ogg quite liked cooking, provided there were other people around to do things like chop up the vegetables and wash the dishes afterwards. (WA)
Nanny Ogg would try anything once. Some things she’d try several thousand times. (WA)
… it wasn’t the wearing of the hats that counted so much as having one to wear. Every trade, every craft had its hat. That’s why kings had hats. Take the crown off a king and all you had was someone good at having a weak chin and waving to people. Hats had power. Hats were important. (WA)
‘You always used to say I was wanton, when we was younger,’ said Nanny.
Granny hesitated, caught momentarily off balance. Then she waved a hand irritably.
‘You was, of course,’ she said dismissively. ‘But you never used magic for it, did you?’
‘Din’t have to,’ said Nanny happily. ‘An off-the-shoulder dress did the trick most of the time.’
‘Right off the shoulder and onto the grass, as I recall,’ said Granny. (WA)
It had taken many years under the tutelage of Granny Weatherwax for Magrat to learn that the common kitchen breadknife was better than the most ornate of magical knives. It could do all that the magical knife could do, plus you could also use it to cut bread. (WA)
It is a universal fact that any innocent comment made by any recently-married young member of any workforce is an instant trigger for coarse merriment among his or her older and more cynical colleagues. (WA)
For wolves and pigs and bears, thinking that they’re human is a tragedy. For a cat, it’s an experience. (WA)
‘… a bit of hussing never did anyone any harm.’ (WA)
‘My name’s Casanunda,’ he said. ‘I’m reputed to be the world’s greatest lover. What do you think?’
Nanny Ogg looked him up and down or, at least, down and further down.
‘You’re a dwarf,’ she said.
‘Size isn’t important.’ (WA)
‘How about a date?’
‘How old do you think I am?’ said Nanny.
Casanunda considered. ‘All right, then. How about a prune?’ (WA)
The wages of sin are death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays. (WA)
Granny Weatherwax wouldn’t know what a pattern of quantum inevitability was if she found it eating her dinner. If you mentioned the words ‘paradigm of space-time’ to her she’d just say ‘What?’ But that didn’t mean she was ignorant. It just meant that she didn’t have truck with words, especially gibberish. (WA)
Stories are not, on the whole, interested in swineherds who remain swineherds and poor and humble shoe-makers whose destiny is to die slightly poorer and much humbler. (WA)
…when all people had was practically nothing, then anything could be almost everything. (WA)
The invisible people knew that happiness is not the natural state of mankind, and is never achieved from the outside in. (WA)
Genuan cooking, like the best cooking everywhere in the multiverse, has been evolved by people who had to make desperate use of ingredients their masters didn’t want. No-one would even try a bird’s nest unless they had to. Only hunger would make a man taste his first alligator. No-one would eat a shark’s fin if they were allowed to eat the rest of the shark. (WA)
Cats gravitate to kitchens like rocks gravitate to gravity. (WA)
‘He’s a frog,’ said Granny flatly.
‘But only on the inside,’ said Lily.
‘Inside’s where it counts,’ said Granny.
‘Outside’s quite important, mind’ said Nanny. (WA)
‘The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy.’ (WA)
‘You can’t go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world. Otherwise it’s just a cage.’ (WA)
‘Don’t you talk to me about progress. Progress just means bad things happen faster.’ (WA)
‘I’m a world-famous liar.’
‘Is that true?’
‘No.’
‘What about you being the world’s greatest lover?’
There was silence for a while.
‘Well maybe I’m only No. 2,’ said Casanunda. ‘But I try harder.’ (WA)
Cats are like witches. They don’t fight to kill, but to win. There is a difference. There’s no point in killing an opponent. That way, they won’t know they’ve lost, and to be real winner you have to have an opponent who is beaten and knows it. There’s no triumph over a corpse, but a beaten opponent, who will remain beaten every day of the remainder of their sad and wretched life, is something to treasure. (WA)
…it is almost impossible to develop decent swordsmanship when you seem to have run into a foodmixer that is biting your ears off. (WA)
‘You can’t make things right by magic. You can only stop making them wrong.’ (WA)
‘We’re her godmothers,’ said Granny.
‘That’s right,’ said Nanny Ogg.
‘We’ve got a want too,’ said Magrat.
‘But you hate godmothers, Mistress Weatherwax,’ said Mrs Gogol.
‘We’re the other kind,’ said Granny. ‘We’re the kind that give people what they know they really need, not what we think they ought to want.’ (WA)
‘I don’t want to hurt you, Mistress Weatherwax,’ said Mrs. Gogol.
‘That’s good,’ said Granny. ‘I don’t want you to hurt me either.’ (WA)
‘Will she live happily ever after?’ he said.
NOT FOREVER. BUT PERHAPS FOR LONG ENOUGH. (WA)
The trouble with witches is that they’ll never run away from things they really hate.
And the trouble with small furry animals in a corner is that, just occasionally, one of them’s a mongoose. (WA)
A good cook is always the first one into the kitchen every morning and the last one to go home at night. (WA)
Humanity’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there. (WA)
...they say travelin broadens the mind, I reckon I could pull mine out my ears now and knot it under my chin... (WA)
Granny looked at the rising sun poking through the mists.
‘Good and bad is tricky,’ she said. ‘I ain’t too certain about where people stand. P’rhaps what matters is which way you face.’ (WA)
‘It’s not staying in the same place that’s the problem,’ said Nanny, ‘it’s not letting your mind wander.’ (WA)
Nanny kicked her red boots together idly.
‘Well, I suppose there’s no place like home,’ she said.
‘No,’ said Granny Weatherwax, still looking thoughtful. ‘No. There’s a billion places like home. But only one of ‘em’s where you live.’
‘So, we’re going back?’ said Magrat.
‘Yes.’
But they went the long way, and saw the elephant. (WA)
