The Wit & Wisdom of Discworld - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,89

he figures, why not? And she, who by now thinks there’s something wrong with her, is so grateful she says okay’

*

‘Needs eating up.’ That was a phrase of Sybil’s that got to Vimes. She’d announce at lunch: ‘We must have the pork tonight, it needs eating up.’ Vimes never had an actual problem with this, because he’d been raised to eat what was put in front of him, and do it quickly, too, before someone else snatched it away. He was just puzzled at the suggestion that he was there to do the food a favour.

*

When did Lord Vetinari sleep? Presumably the man must get his head down at some point, Vimes reasoned. Everyone slept. Catnaps could get you by for a while, but sooner or later you need a solid eight hours, right?

It was almost midnight, and there was Vetinari at his desk, fresh as a daisy and chilly as morning dew.

*

Mustrum Ridcully was capable of enormous powers of concentration when absolutely no alternative presented itself.

*

‘This is all rather fun,’ said Sybil, as the coaches headed out of the city. ‘Do you remember when we last went on holiday, Sam?’

‘That wasn’t really a holiday, dear,’ said Vimes.

‘Well, it was very interesting, all the same,’ said Sybil.

‘Yes, dear. Werewolves tried to eat me.’

*

Historical Re-creation. With people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days.

† This was a bit of a slur on Nobby, Vimes had to admit. Nobby was human, just like many other officers. It was just that he was the only one who had to carry a certificate to prove it.

† The better class of gods, anyway. Not the ones with the tentacles, obviously

TIFFANY Aching put one foot wrong, made one little mistake …

And now the spirit of winter is in lo love with her her. He give her roses and iceber icebergs, says it with avalanches and showers her with snowflakes – which is tough when you’re thirteen, but also just a little bit … cool.

And just because the Wintersmith wants to marry you is no excuse for neglecting the chores. So she must look after Miss Treason, who’s 113 and has far too many eyes, learn the secret of Boffo, catch Horace the cheese, stop Annagramm Hawkin from becoming an embarrassment to all witches, avoid Nanny Ogg giving her a lecture on sex, stop the gods from seeing her in the bath—

‘Crivens!’

—oh, yes, and be helped by the Nac Mac Feegles, whether she wants it or not.

It’s unfair, but as Granny Weatherwax says, no one ever said it was going to be fair. And if Tiffany doesn’t work it all out, there will never be another springtime …

When the gods made sheep they must’ve left their brains in their other coat.

‘Cackling’, to a witch, didn’t just mean nasty laughter. It meant your mind drifting away from its anchor. It meant you losing your grip. It meant loneliness and hard work and responsibility and other people’s problems driving you crazy a little bit at a time, each bit so small that you’d hardly notice it, until you thought that it was normal to stop washing and wear a kettle on your head. It meant you thinking that the fact you knew more than anyone else in your village made you better than them. It meant thinking that right and wrong were negotiable. And, in the end, it meant you ‘going to the dark’, as the witches said. That was a bad road. At the end of that road were poisoned spinning-wheels and gingerbread cottages.

*

Everyone had something inside them that told the world they were there. That was why you could often sense when someone was behind you, even if they were making no sound at all. You were receiving their ‘I am here!’ signal.

Some people had a very strong one. They were the people who got served first in shops. Granny Weatherwax had an ‘I am here’ signal that bounced off the mountains when she wanted it to; when she walked into a forest, all the wolves and bears ran out the other side.

*

Mrs Earwig was all wrong to Granny Weatherwax. She wasn’t born locally, which was almost a crime to begin with. She wrote books, and Granny Weatherwax didn’t trust books. And Mrs Earwig believed in shiny wands and magical amulets and mystic runes and the