The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

‘At my old school we were in and out of skirts all the time.’
    He looked around at the circle of absolutely expressionless faces.
    ‘Theatricals, you see?’ he said brightly. ‘No gels at our boarding school, of course. But we didn’t let that stop us. Why, my Lady Spritely in A Comedy of Cuckolds is still talked about. No, if we need a woman, I’m your man.’

 
    E LEYEN-year-old Tiffany Aching wants to be a real witch. But a real witch doesn’t casually step out of her body, leaving it empty. Tiffany does - and there’s something just waiting for a handy body to take over. Something ancient and horrible, which can’t die. Now Tiffany’s got to learn to be a real witch really quickly, with the help of arch-witch Mistress Weatherwax and the truly amazing Miss Level.
    ‘Crivens! And us!’
    Oh, yes. And the Nac Mac Feegle - the rowdiest, toughest, smelliest bunch of fairies ever to be thrown out of Fairyland for having been drunk at two in the afternoon. They’ll fight anything …
    The Nac Mac Feegle are the most dangerous of the fairy races, particularly when drunk. They love drinking, fighting and stealing, and will in fact steal anything that is not nailed down. If it is nailed down, they will steal the nails as well.
    *
    The origin of the Nac Mac Feegle is lost in the famous Mists of Time. They say that they were thrown out of Fairyland by the Queen of the Fairies because they objected to her spiteful and tyrannical rule. Others say they were just thrown out for being drunk.
    *
    Little is known about their religion, if any, save for one fact: they think they are dead. They like our world, with its sunshine and mountains and blue skies and things to fight. An amazing world like this couldn’t be open to just anybody, they say. It must be some kind of a heaven or Valhalla, where brave warriors go when they are dead. So, they reason, they have already been alive somewhere else, and then died and were allowed to come here because they have been so good.
    This is a quite incorrect and fanciful notion because, as we know, the truth is exactly the other way around.
    *
    The new boots were all wrong. They were stiff and shiny. Shiny boots! That was disgraceful. Clean boots, that was different. There was nothing wrong with putting a bit of a polish on boots to keep the wet out. But boots had to work for a living. They shouldn’t shine.

    Witches were a bit like cats. .
    They didn’t much like one another’s company, but they did like to know where all the other witches were, just in case they needed them.

    People in the chalk country didn’t trust witches. They thought they danced around on moonlit nights without their drawers on. (Tiffany had made enquiries about this, and had been slightly relieved to find out that you didn’t have to do this to be a witch. You could if you wanted to, but only if you were certain where all the nettles, thistles and hedgehogs were.)
    *
    If there’s one thing a Feegle likes more than a party, it’s a bigger party, and if there’s anything better than a bigger party, it’s a bigger party with someone else paying for the drink.
    *
    If you want to upset a witch you don’t have to mess around with charms and spells, you just have to put her in a room with a picture that’s hung slightly crooked and watch her squirm.
    *
    Rob Anybody had mastered the first two rules of writing, as he understood them.
    1)Steal some paper.
    2)Steal a pencil.
    Unfortunately there was more to it than that.
    *
    Twoshirts was just a bend in the road, with a name. There was nothing there but an inn for the coaches, a blacksmith’s shop, and a small store with the word SOUVENIRS written optimistically on a scrap of cardboard in the window. And that was it. Around the place, separated by fields and scraps of woodland, were the houses of people for whom Twoshirts was, presumably, the big city. Every world is full of places like Twoshirts. They are places for people to come from, not go to.
    *
    The wood was about half an hour’s walk away. It was nothing special, as woods go, being mostly full-grown beech, although once you know that beech drips unpleasant poisons on the ground beneath it to keep it clear it’s not quite the timber you thought it was.
    *
    First Thoughts are the everyday thoughts. Everyone has those. Second Thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those. Third Thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by