More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
September 24 - October 9, 2024
needed practically all the time, but not, in a very polite and definitely unspoken way, not exactly wanted.
Everybody needs a witch, but sometimes they just don’t know it.
He loved her to distraction, and the thought of her even frowning in his direction turned his knees to jelly.
Perhaps it’s true what they say, thought Tiffany, that anything goes with garlic. Except custard.
That was the thing about thoughts. They thought themselves, and then dropped into your head in the hope that you would think so too. You had to slap them down, thoughts like that;
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.
“Well, as a lawyer I can tell you that something that looks very simple indeed can be incredibly complicated, especially if I’m being paid by the hour. The sun is simple. A sword is simple. A storm is simple. Behind everything simple is a huge tail of complicated.”
Ye know full well that the meaning of life is to find your gift. To find your gift is happiness. Never tae find it is misery.
“Me and the wife is going to go out tonight, young lady, and we are going to go waltzing!” “But I thought that led to depraved behavior?” said Tiffany. The coachman winked at her. “Well, we can but hope!” he said.
“Boy meets girl, one of the greatest engines of narrative causality in the multiverse, or as some people might put it, ‘It had to happen.’
“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”
It seemed to her, looking down the length of the hall, that you didn’t need to grind the faces of the poor if you taught them to do their own grinding.
Everybody was good at something. The only wicked thing was not finding out what it was in time.
When Mr. Aching had worked for the old Baron, they had, as men of the world, reached a sensible arrangement, which was that Mr. Aching would do whatever the Baron asked him to do. Provided the Baron asked Mr. Aching to do what Mr. Aching wanted to do and it needed to be done. That was what loyalty meant, her father had told her one day. It meant that good men of all sorts worked well when they understood about rights and duties and the dignity of everyday people. And people treasured that dignity all the more because that was, give or take some bed linen, pots and pans, and a few tools and
...more
Human beings seemed to be nothing but a lot of scurrying dots. And when you started thinking like that, it was time you found the company of some other witches, to get your head straight. You shall not be a witch alone, the saying went. It wasn’t so much advice as a demand.
“I said you weren’t born with a talent for witchcraft: It didn’t come easily; you worked hard at it because you wanted it. You forced the world to give it to you, no matter the price, and the price is, and will always be, high. Have you heard the saying ‘The reward you get for digging holes is a bigger shovel’?”
“Miss Tiffany, you need a rest, a proper rest in a proper bed. What kind of witch can look after everybody if she’s not sensible enough to look after herself? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. That means, Who guards the guards, that does,” Preston went on. “So who watches the witches? Who cares for the people who care for the people? Right now, it looks like it needs to be me.”
It shouldn’t rain on a funeral. It made people too gloomy. She tried not to be gloomy at funerals. 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.
But now, if she asked for help, well . . . people would help. Witches always helped other witches. But everyone would think, Was she really any good? Can’t she last the distance? Is she strong enough for the long haul? No one would say anything, but everyone would think it.
“Dance, dance, the shaking of the sheets. Dance, dance, when you hear the piper playing,” she sang. Tiffany thought, Is this the right song for a funeral? And then she thought, Of course it is! It’s a wonderful tune and it tells us that one day all of us will die but—and this is the important thing—we are not dead yet.
“Do you believe in luck?” said the Duchess. “I believe in not having to believe in luck,”
And then, not knowing exactly why, she said, “When I am old, I shall wear midnight. But not today.”
people aren’t just people; they are people surrounded by circumstances.
someone doing what they really like is always an asset to any country, and too often people never find out until it’s too late.”
“There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can’t, but I can change the present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out to be a past worth having. And I’d like the boys to learn about girls and I’d like the girls to learn about boys. Learning is about finding out who you are, what you are, where you are and what you are standing on and what you are good at and what’s over the horizon and, well, everything. It’s about finding the place where you fit. I found the place where I fit, and I would like everybody else to find theirs.
Every step is a first step if it’s a step in the right direction.”
If it is not the truth, then it is what the truth ought to be.
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.
The Feegles believe that they are dead. This world is so nice, they argue, that they must have been really good in a past life and then died and ended up here. Appearing to die here means merely going back to the Last World, which they believe is rather dull.
you can only get so much dirt on you before it starts to fall off of its own accord.
