A Hat Full of Sky (Discworld, #32; Tiffany Aching, #2)

by Terry Pratchett

Bits of Miss Tick’s teachings floated through her head: Always face what you fear. Have just enough money, never too much, and some string. Even if it’s not your fault, it’s your responsibility. Witches deal with things. Never stand between two mirrors. Never cackle. Do what you must do. Never lie, but you don’t always have to be honest. Never wish. Especially don’t wish upon a star, which is astronomically stupid. Open your eyes, and then open your eyes again.

What Tiffany had noticed was that witches filled space. In a way that was almost impossible to describe, they seemed to be more real than others around them. They just showed more. But if they didn’t want to be seen, they became amazingly hard to notice. They didn’t hide, they didn’t magically fade away, although it might seem like that; but if you had to describe the room afterward, you’d swear there hadn’t been a witch in it. They just seemed to let themselves get lost.

someone has to speak up for them as has no voices,”

Knowing things is magical, if other people don’t know them.”

“Mistress Weatherwax is the head witch, then, is she?” “Oh no!” said Miss Level, looking shocked. “Witches are all equal. We don’t have things like head witches. That’s quite against the spirit of witchcraft.” “Oh, I see,” said Tiffany. “Besides,” Miss Level added, “Mistress Weatherwax would never allow that sort of thing.”

You’re like a dog worrying sheep all the time. You don’t give them time to obey you, and you don’t let them know when they’ve done things right. You just keep barking.

They were helpful. They just weren’t good at it. For example, you shouldn’t try to remove a stubborn stain from a plate by repeatedly hitting it with your head.

being a witch and wearing the big black hat was like being a policeman. People saw the uniform, not you. When the mad axeman was running down the street, you weren’t allowed to back away, muttering, “Could you find someone else? Actually, I mostly just do, you know, stray dogs and road safety. . . .” You were there, you had the hat, you did the job. That was a basic rule of witchery: It’s up to you.

You couldn’t say: It’s not my fault. You couldn’t say: It’s not my responsibility. You could say: I will deal with this. You didn’t have to want to. But you had to do it.

It wasn’t a competition, honestly. No one won. And if you believed that, you’d believe that the moon is pushed around the sky by a goblin called Wilberforce.

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

The British author G. K. Chesterton summarized the role of fantasy very well. He said its purpose was to take the everyday, commonplace world and lift it up and turn it around and show it to us from a different perspective, so that once again we see it for the first time and realize how marvelous it is.