Lords And Ladies Quotes
"The play, the game, the war is just a little window on a ribbon of events that may extend back thousands of years."
"In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded."
"On the Disc, if you enchant a needle it will point to the Hub, where the magical field is strongest."
"Much human ingenuity has gone into finding the ultimate Before."
"At the time, the dwarfs and the humans had a very pressing need for the love of iron."
"The current state of knowledge can be summarized thus: In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded."
"Everyone wants something. Otherwise, why are you here?"
"You could be a great witch. You could be anything. Anything you want."
"It was the kind of darkness which causes sheep to leap fences and dogs to skulk in kennels."
"Nanny Ogg never did any housework herself, but she was the cause of housework in other people."
"The thing about the Librarian was that no one noticed he was an orang-utan anymore."
"The wizards didn’t rush this. You could find anything in a wizard’s pocket—peas, unreasonable things with legs, small experimental universes, anything…"
"Dried frog pills," said the Archchancellor. "Someone fish ’em out of his pocket."
"Oh dear, another crop circle," said the Dean.
"It was very hard, being a reader in Invisible Writings."
"Magrat woke up. And knew she wasn’t a witch anymore."
"Someone had stolen her clothes in the night."
"Ridcully was having difficulty with the Librarian."
"I thought them things only turned up out in fields and things," said Ridcully. "Perfectly normal natural phenomenon."
"We don't want to be witches. It's not an easy life."
"You don't want to be a witch. It's not an easy life."
"The world's full of things you could be doing. You don't want to be a witch. It's not an easy life."
"Real witchcraft...out of the blood and the bone and out of the head."
"Don't try the paranormal until you know what's normal."
"You have to build up a bond, you see. If they don't trust you theyaaaagh—"
"It was a different you that got married. He's probably settled down somewhere."
"You'd think I'd think of me, wouldn't you? What a bastard!"
"History always has a great weight of inertia."
"You don't want to be a witch. Not if you knew what it means."
"Not playing stupid games in the daylight, but real witchcraft."
"Over short distances a determined human can outrun a horse, because they’ve only got half as many legs to sort out."
"Humans can outrun a horse, indeed. It was preying on Granny Weatherwax’s mind that no one can outrun an arrow."
"The rules of Borrowing were: you didn’t hurt, you just rode inside their heads, you didn’t involve the subject in any way…"
"Well, not so much a rule, as such, more of a general guideline."
"In terms of difficulty, playing one tune on a musical instrument and singing a totally different one was a stroll in the country by comparison."
"Heartless it may be, but headless it ain’t. I’ve never claimed to be nice, just to be sensible."
"Everyone may be right, all at the same time. That’s the thing about quantum."
"No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad."
"The basic unit of witchcraft is the witch, but the basic continuous unit, as has already been indicated, is the cottage."
"The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning."
"Magrat was probably the only person in Lancre who worried about things being biodegradable. Everyone else just hoped things would last and knew that damn near everything went rotten if you left it long enough."
"Of course she wanted to marry Verence, even with his weak chin and slightly runny eyes. In the pit of the night Magrat knew that she was in no position to be choosy, and getting a king in the circumstances was a stroke of luck."
"There’s something about a man who tinkles gently as he moves."
"You had to know this kind of thing, to be a queen."
"Granny Weatherwax lay on her bed, still and cold. In her blue-veined hands, the words: I ATE’NT DEAD…"
"There are some people that would whistle 'Yankee Doodle' in a crowded bar in Atlanta. Even these people would consider it tactless to mention the word 'billygoat' to a troll."
"You can’t set out to be a good witch or a bad witch. It never worked for long. All you could try to be was a witch, as hard as you could."
"Magrat hesitated for a moment. She’d never quite analyzed that emotion."
"Being a queen was like being an actor, and Magrat had never been any good at acting. She’d always felt she wasn’t very good at being Magrat, if it came to that."
"Personal’s not the same as important. People just think it is."
"He’d arranged a careful romantic candlelit supper. Casanunda had always believed in the art of seduction."
"Nanny Ogg was an attractive lady, which is not the same as being beautiful. She fascinated Casanunda."
"I wish I had my crossbow," muttered Ridcully. "With that head on my wall I’d always have a place to hang my hat."
"Everything that his fellow dwarfs did very occasionally as nature demanded he did all the time, sometimes in the back of a sedan chair and once upside down in a tree."
"And Nanny Ogg was an attractive lady, which is not the same as being beautiful. She fascinated Casanunda."
"The great pent-up waters of dwarfish sexuality had found a leak at the bottom of the dam—small, but with enough power to drive a dynamo."
"And then there had been the gypsy violinist. At first Nanny had complained about people playin’ the fiddle while she was trying to concentrate on her eatin’, but between courses she’d snatched it off the man, thrown the bow into a bowl of camellias, retuned the instrument to something approaching a banjo, and had given Casanunda three rousing verses of what, him being foreign, she chose to call Il Porcupino Nil Sodomy Est."
"This was going to be more enjoyable than it’d suspected."
"He too had received an invitation to the wedding, but it had been snatched from his hand and eaten in mistake for one of his fingers by Lady Jane, an ancient and evil-tempered gyrfalcon."
"That’s my best bird," he said proudly. "I’ve nearly got her trained. She’s very good. I’m training her. She’s very intelligent. She knows eleven words of command."
""She does that with me, too," said Hodgesaargh. "Sorry about that. She’s very intelligent."
"Magrat thumped the breastplate. 'Fairly good fit,' she said, defying Shawn to point out that in certain areas there was quite a lot of air between the metal and Magrat. 'Not that a few tucks and a rivet here and there wouldn’t help. Don’t you think it looks good?'"
""You really think so?" "Oh, yes," said Shawn, inventing madly. "You’ve got the figure for it."
"She’s still going to die. She’s just probably going to die bravely."
""It’s some old king and his warriors," whispered Nanny, as they hurried away. "Some kind of magical sleep, I’m told."
""Hiho, hiho—" Nanny Ogg grinned in the darkness."
""You can’t ever rule again, back in the world," said Nanny. "There’s too much music. There’s too much iron."
""But why should he want to stop her?" "Well, he’s her husband, after all. He can’t stand her. It’s what you might call an open marriage."
""One day he’ll be back," said Nanny softly. "When even the iron in the head is rusty."
""I’ve got everything to fight for, haven’t I? And I’ve tried everything else."
"You been studyin’ this, Shawn?" she inquired.
"Give it a try, then. If you think it’ll work."
"Well," she said, "it’s like this. If you go out there you may have to face elves. But if you stops here, you definitely have to face me."
"You just got to know how to deal with people."
"Not exactly," said Nanny, "but if they know what’s good for 'em they’ll go where an Ogg follows."
"Humans are always slightly lost. It's a basic characteristic. It explains a lot about them."
"Elves are never lost at all. It's a basic characteristic. It explains a lot about them."
"For an elf, the world is something to reach out and take."
"‘And I kissed her in the shrubbery where the nightingales’—sing it, you bastards! Two, three!"
"It’s not what you’ve got that matters, it’s how you’ve got it."
"And I’m sure you think about it…in those long evenings when there’s no company but the ticking of the clock and the coldness of the room."
"What don’t die can’t live. What don’t live can’t change. What don’t change can’t learn."
"We don’t want the world. Just this little kingdom will do. And we will take it, whether it wants us or not."
"Sometimes, if you pay real close attention to the pebbles you find out about the ocean."
"You get the hang of it. Anyway, if she hasn’t gone to a better place she’ll damn well be setting out to improve it."
"We’re advantaged, yes, but we act with modesty and we don’t Put Ourselves Forward."
"Everything you did meant that a million copies of you did something else."
"All she could do for all of them was be herself, here and now, as hard as she could."