Equal Rites (Discworld, #3; Witches, #1)

by Terry Pratchett

from a universe where things are less as they are and more like people imagine them to be,

“They’re both magic. If you can’t learn to ride an elephant, you can at least learn to ride a horse.” “What’s an elephant?” “A kind of badger,” said Granny. She hadn’t maintained forest-credibility for forty years by ever admitting ignorance.

she was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don’t apply to you.

(There should be a word for words that sound like things would sound like if they made a noise, he thought. The word “glisten” does indeed gleam oilily, and if there was ever a word that sounded exactly the way sparks look as they creep across burned paper, or the way the lights of cities would creep across the world if the whole of human civilization was crammed into one night, then you couldn’t do better than “coruscate.”)