Terry Pratchett

It's witchcraft with all the crusts cut off, and real witchcraft is ALL crusts.

That's what you people never understand," said Rincewind, wearily. "You think magic is just something you can pick up and use like a, a -""Parsnip?" said Nijel."Wine Bottle?" said the Seriph."Something like that," said Rincewind cautiously, but rallied somewhat and went on, "But the truth is, is -""Not like that?""More like a wine bottle?" said the Seriph hopefully."Magic uses people," said Rincewind hurriedly. "It affects you as much as you affect it, sort of thing. You can't mess around with magical things without it affecting you. I just thought I'd better warn you.""Like a wine bottle," said Creosote, "that -""- drinks you back," said Rincewind.

It__ still magic even if you know how it__ done.

Look at it like this, it's not that we're making life, we're simply giving life a place to live.

... darkness isn't the opposite of light, it is simplyits absence, and what was radiating from the book was the light that lies on the far side ofdarkness, the light fantastic.It was a rather disappointing purple colour.

Haven__ you got any romance in your soul?_ said Magrat plaintively. __o,_ said Granny. 'I ain__. And stars don__ care what you wish, and magic don__ make things better, and no one doesn__ get burned who sticks their hand in a fire. If you want to amount to anything as a witch, Magrat Garlick, you got to learn three things. What__ real, what__ not real, and what__ the difference.

Time travel was only a kind of magic, after all. That's why it always went wrong.

Real magic is the hand around the bandsaw, the thrown spark in the powder keg, the dimension-warp linking you straight into the heart of a star, the flaming sword that burns all the way down to the pommel. Sooner juggle torches in a tar pit than mess with real magic. Sooner lie down in front of a thousand elephants.

It took place in the midnight in the University's Great Hall, in a welter of incense, candlesticks, runic inscriptions and magic circles, none of which was strictly necessary but which made the wizards feel better.

Unseen University was much bigger on the inside. Thousands of years as the leading establishment of practical magic in a world where dimensions were largely a matter of chance in any case had left it bulging in places where it shouldn't have places. There were rooms containing rooms which, if you entered them, turned out to contain the room you'd started with, which can be a problem if you are in a conga line.

We've strayed into a zone with a high magical index,' he said. 'Don't ask me how. Once upon a time a really powerful magic field must have been generated here, and we're feeling the after-effects.'Precisely,' said a passing bush.

It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself.But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple.

It's still magic even if you know how it's done.

That's what's so stupid about the whole magic thing, you know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you're so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can't remember what happens next.

What is magic?There is the wizard's explanation... wizards talk about candles, circles, planets, stars, bananas, chants, runes and the importance of having at least four good meals every day.

The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.

Perhaps the magic would last, perhaps it wouldn't. But then again, what does?

The coach passed by many buildings of this sort, which would no doubt be little palaces to the occupants, who had escaped from Cockbill Street and Pigsty Hill and all the other neighbourhoods where people still dreamed that they could __etter themselves_, an achievement that might be attained, oh happy day, when they had __ little place of their own_. It was an inspiring dream, if you didn__ look too deeply into words like mortgage and repayments and repossession and bankruptcy, and the lower middle classes of Ankh-Morpork, who saw themselves as being trodden on by the class above and illegally robbed by the one below, lined up with borrowed money to purchase, by instalments, their own little Oi Dong