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August 24 - September 3, 2022
They didn’t teach you how to do it. They taught you how to know what you were doing.
It was too easy to slip into careless little cruelties because you had power and other people hadn’t, too easy to think other people didn’t matter much, too easy to think that ideas like right and wrong didn’t apply to you.
Granny Aching had never been at home with words. She collected silence like other people collected string. But she had a way of saying nothing that said it all.
everyone apart from the cheeses and the cat stood at the gate and waved
it is a wife’s job to stop her husband actually exploding with pride.
if they couldn’t bend their thinking around the world, they bent the world around their thinking.
They are places for people to come from, not go to.
Miss Tick had a way of asking questions that got the answers she wanted.
Witches were also good at asking questions that weren’t followed by the other person saying, “Why?”
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.
Up here, there were no sheep to baa and no bells to tonk, and every time one didn’t, she woke up thinking, What was that?
Tiffany woke up, still alive and not chopped up, when the dawn was just turning gray.
“You will? What do you do with all that food?” “Store it,” said Miss Level. “But you—” “I store it in other people. It’s amazing what you can store in other people.” Miss Level laughed at Tiffany’s expression. “I mean, I take what I don’t need around to those who don’t have a pig, or who’re going through a bad patch, or who don’t have anyone to remember them.” “But that means they’ll owe you a favor!” “Right! And so it just keeps on going around. It all works out.”
“Oh, no,” said Miss Level, genuinely shocked. “You can’t not help people just because they’re stupid or forgetful or unpleasant. Everyone’s poor around here. If I don’t help them, who will?” “Granny Aching . . . that is, my grandmother said someone has to speak up for them as has no voices,” Tiffany volunteered after a moment.
“There isn’t a way things should be. There’s just what happens, and what we do.”
“We do what can be done. Mistress Weatherwax said you’ve got to learn that witchcraft is mostly about doing quite ordinary things.”
hermit elephant.*
If it had had the brains of a tree, it would have been puzzled. If it had had the brains of a human, it would have been frightened.
How do I know I’m me? Suppose I’m not me but just think I’m me? How can I tell if I’m me or not? Who’s the “me” who’s asking the question? Am I thinking these thoughts? How would I know if I wasn’t?
“Because she likes people,” said the witch, striding ahead. “She cares about ’em. Even the stupid, mean, drooling ones, the mothers with the runny babies and no sense, the feckless and the silly and the fools who treat her like some kind of a servant. Now that’s what I call magic—seein’ all that, dealin’ with all that, and still goin’ on. It’s sittin’ up all night with some poor old man who’s leavin’ the world, taking away such pain as you can, comfortin’ their terror, seein’ ’em safely on their way . . . and then cleanin’ ’em up, layin’ ’em out, making ’em neat for the funeral, and helpin’
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the start and finish, is helpin’ people when life is on the edge. Even people you don’t like. Stars is easy, people is hard.”
There’d be a sight more frogs in this world if I didn’t know how not to turn people into them.
doing it moves you into your center, so’s you don’t wobble. It anchors you. Keeps you human,
They were treated like royalty—not the sort who get dragged off to be beheaded or have something nasty done with a red-hot poker, but the other sort,
you have to tell people a story they can understand.
That was kind of a strange thought to keep in your head:We’re trying to find a way of killing a terrible creature, but at least we won’t be covered in crumbs.
“AAaargwannawannaaaagongongonaargggaaaaBLOON!” which is the traditional sound of a very small child learning that with balloons, as with life itself, it is important to know when not to let go of the string. The whole point of balloons is to teach small children this.
Bobbing for Piranhas,
Gossip spreads faster among witches than a bad cold.
As a kelda, she would welcome home a warrior. As a wife, she would kiss her husband and scold him for being so long away. As a woman, she thought she would melt with relief, thankfulness, and joy.
no one likes anonymous sick dropping out of the sky.
Truth
it always pays to mind your manners around invisible people.
When I’m old, I shall wear midnight, she’d decided. But for now she’d had enough of darkness.
“There’s always a story,” she said. “It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.”
It’s always surprising to be reminded that while you’re watching and thinking about people, all knowing and superior, they’re watching and thinking about you, right back at you.
