The Wit & Wisdom of Discworld - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,64

me or what?’

ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE WORDS ‘DEATH WAS HIS CONSTANT COMPANION’?

Lady Sybil wasn’t a good cook.

She’d never been taught proper cookery; at her school it had always been assumed that other people would be doing the cooking and that in any case it would be for fifty people using at least four types of fork.

WILLIAM just wants to get at the truth.

Unfortunately, everyone else wants to get at William. And it’s only the third edition…

William de Worde is the accidental editor of the Discworld’s first newspaper. Now he must cope with the traditional perils of a journalist’s life - people who want him dead, a recovering vampire with a suicidal fascination for flash photography, some more people who want him dead in a different way and, worst of all, the man who keeps begging him to publish pictures of his humorously shaped potatoes.

The rumour spread through the city like wildfire (which had quite often spread through Ankh-Morpork since its citizens had learned the words ‘fire insurance’).

*

Selling hot sausages from a tray was by way of being the ground state of Dibbler’s existence, from which he constantly sought to extricate himself and back to which he constantly returned when his latest venture went all runny. Which was a shame, because Dibbler was an extremely good hot sausage salesman. He had to be, given the nature of his sausages.

*

As for Mr Pin and Mr Tulip, all that need be known about them at this point is that they are the kind of people who call you ‘friend’. People like that aren’t friendly.

‘You know I’ve always wanted a paperless office—’

‘Yes, Archchancellor, that’s why you hide it all in cupboards and throw it out of the window at night.’

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.

The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: ‘What’s up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don’t think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!’

*

Hugglestones was a boarding school so bleak and spartan that only the upper classes would dream of sending their sons there.

It was a granite building on a rain-soaked moor, and its stated purpose was to make men from boys. The policy employed involved a certain amount of wastage, and consisted of very simple and violent games in the healthy outdoor sleet. The small, slow, fat or merely unpopular were mown down, as nature intended.

*

‘Ah,’ said Mr Pin. ‘Right. You are concerned citizens.’ He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where ‘traditional values’ meant ‘hang someone’.

*

‘Clear my appointments this morning, will you? I will see the Guild of Towncriers at nine o’clock and the Guild of Engravers at ten past.’

‘I wasn’t aware they had appointments, sir.’

‘They will have,’ said Lord Vetinari.

*

‘I am looking for Mister William der Worde,’ rumbled a voice.

‘That’s me,’ said William.

‘Der Patrician will see you now,’ said the troll.

‘I don’t have an appointment with Lord Vetinari!’

‘Ah, well,’ said the troll, ‘you’d be amazed at how many people has appointments wid der Patrician an’ dey don’t know it.’

*

Dibbler opened the special section of his tray, the high-class one that contained sausages whose contents were 1) meat, 2) from a known four-footed creature, 3) probably land-dwelling.

*

‘ … a naked man, hotly pursued by Members of the Watch, burst through the Window and ran around the Room, causing much Disarray of the Tarts before being Apprehended by the Trifles.’

An innocent young reporter writes.

*

William wondered why he always disliked people who said ‘no offence meant’. Maybe it was because they found it easier to say ‘no offence meant’ than actually refrain from giving offence.

*

William felt predisposed to like Vimes, if only because of the type of enemies he made, but as far as he could see everything about the man could be prefaced by the word ‘badly’, as in -spoken, -educated and -in need of a drink.

*

‘Ah, just the man I was looking for!’ said William.

‘Am I?’ wheezed Nobbs, smoke curling out of his ears.

‘Yes, I’ve been talking to Commander Vimes, and now I would like to see the room where the crime was committed.’ William had great hopes of that sentence. It seemed to contain the words ‘and he gave me permission to’