discworld

You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!'IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE.'She's a child!' shouted Crumley.IT'S EDUCATIONAL.'What if she cuts herself?'THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON.

Is somethin' wrong?" said Daft Wullie."Aye!" snapped the kelda. "Rob willnae tak' a drink o' Special Sheep Liniment!"Wullie's little face screwed up in instant grief."Ach, the Big Man's deid!" he sobbed. "Oh waily waily waily - "Will ye hush yer gob, ye big mudlin!" shouted Rob Anybody, standing up. "I am no' deid! I'm trying to have a moment o' existential dreed here, right? Crivens, it's a puir lookout if a man cannae feel the chilly winds o' Fate lashing aroound his nethers wi'out folks telling him he's deid, eh?

where actual evidence had been a bit sparse he had, in the best traditions of the keen ethnic historian, inferred from revealed self-evident wisdom* *Made it upand extrapolated from associated sources** **had read a lot of stuff that other people had made up, too.

Tiffany knew what the problem was immediately. She'd seen it before, atbirthday parties. Her brother was suffering from tragic sweetdeprivation. Yes, he was surrounded by sweets. But the moment he took anysweet at all, said his sugar-addled brain, that meant he was not takingall the rest. And there were so many sweets he'd never be able to eatthem all. It was too much to cope with. The only solution was to burstinto tears.

History was full of the bones of good men who'd followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started following bad orders.

Men marched away, Vimes. And men marched back. How glorious the battles would have been that they never had to fight!

It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?

Life could be horrible in the wrong trouser of time.

All he had was nothing, but that was something, and now it had been taken away.

never ask the tight-rope walker how he keeps his balance. if he stops to think about it, he falls off

Several times he had to flatten himself against the shelves as a thesaurus thundered by. He waited patiently as a herd of Critters crawled past, grazing on the contents of the choicer books and leaving behind them piles of small slim volumes of literary criticism.

I HAVE MADE THIS FOR YOU. She reached out and took a damp square of cardboard. Water dripped off the bottom. Somewhere in the middle, a few brown feathers seemed to have been glued on. 'Thank you. Er ... what is it?'ALBERT SAID THERE OUGHT TO BE SNOW ON IT, BUT IT APPEARS TO HAVE MELTED, said Death. IT IS, OF COURSE, A HOGSWATCH CARD.'Oh ...' THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN A ROBIN ON IT AS WELL, BUT I HAD CONSIDERABLE DIFFICULTY IN GETTING IT TO STAY ON. 'Ah...'IT WAS NOT AT ALL COOPERATIVE.'Really ...?'IT DID NOT SEEM TO GET INTO THE HOGSWATCH SPIRIT AT ALL.

Susan stared at him.The blue glow in Death__ eyes gradually faded, and as the light died it sucked at her gaze so that it was dragged into the eye sockets and into the darkness beyond_which went on and on, for ever. There was no word for it. Even eternity was a human idea. Giving it a name gave it a length; admittedly, a very long one. But this darkness was what was left when eternity had given up. It was where Death lived. Alone.

For a witch stands on the very edge of everything, between the light and the dark, between life and death, making choices, making decisions so that others may pretend no decisions have even been needed. Sometimes they need to help some poor soul through the final hours, help them to find the door, not to get lost in the dark.

The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed.

It's like chess, you know. The Queen saves the King.

Captain Vimes believed in logic, in much the same way as a man in a desert believed in ice -- i.e., it was something he really needed, but this just wasn't the world for it.

Of course, to be fair, that was a parent's job. The world was so full of sharp bends that if they didn't put a few twists in you, you wouldn't stand a chance of fitting in.