I Shall Wear Midnight (Discworld, #38; Tiffany Aching, #4)

by Terry Pratchett

her friend could sit down with a pig and talk to it gently and calmly about extremely boring things until some strange pig mechanism took over, whereupon it would give a happy little yawn and fall over, no longer a living pig and ready to become a very important contribution to the family’s diet for the following year.

Granny Weatherwax would not be seen dead with a walking stick, and certainly wouldn’t be seen alive with one.

She had heard it said that, before you could understand anybody, you needed to walk a mile in their shoes, which did not make a whole lot of sense, because probably after you had walked a mile in their shoes, you would understand that they were chasing you and accusing you of the theft of a pair of shoes—although, of course, you could probably outrun them, owing to their lack of footwear. But

To him, the pain was a bully, and what did you do to bullies? You stood up to them, because they always ran away in the end. But the pain didn’t know about that rule. It just bullied even more. And the Baron lay with thin white lips; Tiffany could hear him not screaming.

And a grunt from Granny Weatherwax was like a round of applause from anybody else.

A legal Feegle? How could there be such a thing?

Despite himself, Wee Mad Arthur was grinning. “Have you boys got no shame?”

Rob Anybody matched him grin for grin. “I couldna say,” he replied, “but if we have, it probably belonged tae somebody else.”

“The Nac Mac Feegles feel that the truth is so precious that it shouldn’t be waved about too much,”

“The past needs to be remembered. If you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going.”

trying to find a way of saying the words that there had never been time for, trying to make up for too much silence, trying to bring back yesterday and nail it firmly to now.

“A kind of code word,” said Preston. “Strictly speaking, it means a word that your enemy would be unable to say. For example, in the case of the Duchess, it might be a good idea to choose a word like ‘please.’”

People lived, and died, and were remembered. It happened in the same way that winter follows summer. It was not a wrong thing. There were tears, of course, but they were for those who were left; those who had gone on did not need them.

It is important that we know where we come from, because if you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going. And if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re probably going wrong. Terry Pratchett Wiltshire 27 May 2010