The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

moving closer.
    ‘Marry, I’m sure I’m not allowed to tell you,’ said the Fool. ‘The duke said to me, he said, don’t tell the witches that it’s tomorrow night.’
    ‘I shouldn’t, then,’ agreed Magrat.
    ‘At eight o’clock.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘But meet for sherry beforehand at seven-thirty, i’faith.’
    *
    Nanny … leaned towards the empty seat. ‘Walnut?’
    ‘No, thank you,’ said King Verence [a ghost], waving a spectral hand. ‘They go right through me, you know.’

 

    B EING trained by the Assassins’ Guild in Ankfe-Morpork did not fit Teppic for the task assigned to him by fate. He inherited the throne of the desert kingdom of Djelibeybi rather earlier than he expected (his father wasn’t too happy about it either), but that was only the beginning of his problems…
    All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed.
    *
    He … had also heard that only one student in fifteen actually became an assassin. He wasn’t entirely certain what happened to the other fourteen, but he was pretty sure that if you were a poor student in a school for assassins they did a bit more than throw the chalk at you, and that the school dinners had an extra dimension of uncertainty.
    *
    Djelibeybi really was a small, self-centred kingdom. Even its plagues were half-hearted. All self-respecting river kingdoms have vast supernatural plagues, but the best the Old Kingdom had been able to achieve in the last hundred years was the Plague of Frog. †
    *
    It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was, of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free.
    *
    ‘What’s your name, kiddo?’
    Teppic drew himself up. ‘Kiddo? I’ll have you know the blood of pharaohs runs in my veins!’
    The other boy looked at him unabashed, with his head on one side and a faint smile on his face.
    ‘Would you like it to stay there?’ he said.

    [My mother] died when I was young … She went for a moonlight swim in what turned out to be a crocodile.

    … Ptraci, his favourite handmaiden. She was special. Her singing always cheered him up. Life seemed so much brighter when she stopped.
    *
    The Ankh … drained the huge silty plains all the way to the Ramtop mountains, and by the time it had passed through Ankh-Morpork, pop. one million, it could only be called a liquid because it moved faster than the land around it; being sick in it would probably make it, on average, marginally cleaner.
    *
    One of the two legends about the founding of Ankh-Morpork relates that the two orphaned brothers who built the city were in fact found and suckled by a hippopotamus.
    The other legend, not normally recounted by the citizens, is that at an even earlier time a group of wise men survived a flood sent by the gods by building a huge boat, and on this boat they took two of every type of animal then existing on the Disc. After some weeks the combined manure was beginning to weigh the boat low in the water so – the story runs – they tipped it over the side, and called it Ankh-Morpork.
    *
    ‘Cats are sacred,’ said Dios.
    ‘Long-legged cats with silver fur and disdainful expressions are, maybe,’ said Teppic. ‘I’m sure sacred cats don’t leave dead ibises under the bed. And I’m certain that sacred cats that live surrounded by endless sand don’t come indoors and do it in the king’s sandals, Dios.’
    *
    Descendants! The gods had seen fit to give him one son who charged you for the amount of breath expended in saying ‘Good morning’, and another one who worshipped geometry and stayed up all night designing aqueducts. You scrimped and saved to send them to the best schools, and then they went and paid you back by getting educated.
    *
    ‘Why are you here?’
    The man hung his head. T spoke blasphemy against the king.’
    ‘How did you do that?’
    ‘I dropped a rock on my foot. Now my tongue is to be torn out.’
    The dark figure nodded sympathetically.
    A priest heard you, did he?’ he said.
    ‘No. I told a priest. Such words should not go unpunished,’ said the man virtuously.

    The old king told me once that the gods gave people a sense of humour to make up for giving them sex.

    It’s a fact as immutable as the Third Law of Sod that there is no such thing as a good Grand Vizier. A predilection to cackle and plot is apparently part of the job spec.
    *
    ‘Would your sire