The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

know I’ve always wanted a paperless office—’
    ‘Yes, Archchancellor, that’s why you hide it all in cupboards and throw it out of the window at night.’

    There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.
    The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: ‘What’s up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me ? This is my glass? I don’t think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!’
    *
    Hugglestones was a boarding school so bleak and spartan that only the upper classes would dream of sending their sons there.
    It was a granite building on a rain-soaked moor, and its stated purpose was to make men from boys. The policy employed involved a certain amount of wastage, and consisted of very simple and violent games in the healthy outdoor sleet. The small, slow, fat or merely unpopular were mown down, as nature intended.
    *
    ‘Ah,’ said Mr Pin. ‘Right. You are concerned citizens.’ He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where ‘traditional values’ meant ‘hang someone’.
    *
    ‘Clear my appointments this morning, will you? I will see the Guild of Towncriers at nine o’clock and the Guild of Engravers at ten past.’
    ‘I wasn’t aware they had appointments, sir.’
    ‘They will have,’ said Lord Vetinari.
    *
    ‘I am looking for Mister William der Worde,’ rumbled a voice.
    ‘That’s me,’ said William.
    ‘Der Patrician will see you now,’ said the troll.
    ‘I don’t have an appointment with Lord Vetinari!’
    ‘Ah, well,’ said the troll, ‘you’d be amazed at how many people has appointments wid der Patrician an’ dey don’t know it.’
    *
    Dibbler opened the special section of his tray, the high-class one that contained sausages whose contents were 1) meat, 2) from a known four-footed creature, 3) probably land-dwelling.
    *
    ‘ … a naked man, hotly pursued by Members of the Watch, burst through the Window and ran around the Room, causing much Disarray of the Tarts before being Apprehended by the Trifles.’
    An innocent young reporter writes.
    *
    William wondered why he always disliked people who said ‘no offence meant’. Maybe it was because they found it easier to say ‘no offence meant’ than actually refrain from giving offence.
    *
    William felt predisposed to like Vimes, if only because of the type of enemies he made, but as far as he could see everything about the man could be prefaced by the word ‘badly’, as in -spoken, -educated and -in need of a drink.
    *
    ‘Ah, just the man I was looking for!’ said William.
    ‘Am I?’ wheezed Nobbs, smoke curling out of his ears.
    ‘Yes, I’ve been talking to Commander Vimes, and now I would like to see the room where the crime was committed.’ William had great hopes of that sentence. It seemed to contain the words ‘and he gave me permission to’ without actually doing so.
    *
    One of the strange things about eating at Mrs Arcanum’s was that you got more leftovers than you got original meals. That is, there were far more meals made up from what were traditionally considered the prudently usable remains of earlier meals – stews, bubble-and-squeak, curry – than there were meals at which those remains could have originated.
    The curry was particularly strange, since Mrs Arcanum considered foreign parts only marginally less unspeakable than private parts and therefore added the curious yellow curry powder with a very small spoon, lest everyone should suddenlytear their clothes off and do foreign things. The main ingredients appeared to be swede and gritty rainwater tasting sultanas and the remains of some cold mutton.
    *
    The best way to describe Mr Windling would be like this: you are at a meeting. You’d like to be away early. So would everyone else. There really isn’t very much to discuss, anyway. And just as everyone can see Any Other Business coming over the horizon and is already putting their papers neatly together, a voice says ‘If I can raise a minor matter, Mr Chairman …’ and with a horrible wooden feeling in your stomach you know, now, that the evening will go on for twice as long with much referring back to the minutes of earlier meetings. The man who has just said that, and is now sitting there with a smug smile of dedication