Wyrd Sisters (Discworld, #6; Witches, #2)

by Terry Pratchett

“Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things. Well-known fact,” said Granny.

“When you break rules, break ’em good and hard,”

Magrat wondered what it was like, spending your whole life doing something you didn’t want to do. Like being dead, she considered, only worse, the reason being, you were alive to suffer it.

The theater worried her. It had a magic of its own, one that didn’t belong to her, one that wasn’t in her control. It changed the world, and said things were otherwise than they were. And it was worse than that. It was magic that didn’t belong to magical people. It was commanded by ordinary people, who didn’t know the rules. They altered the world because it sounded better.

This was real. This was more real even than reality. This was history. It might not be true, but that had nothing to do with it.

Words were indeed insubstantial. They were as soft as water, but they were also as powerful as water and now they were rushing over the audience, eroding the levees of veracity, and carrying away the past.