Other people salted away money for their old age, but Nanny preferred to accumulate memories.

He's out of his depth on a wet pavement.

People who used magic without knowing what they were doing usually came to a sticky end. All over the entire room, sometimes.

People are bound to get excited when they see a ten-million-ton starship trying to fly down the street.

When Mister Safety Catch Is Not On, Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend.

Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone.

Sam Vimes could parallel process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow their own line of thought while at the same time listening to what their wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full. A vital additional skill is being able to scan the dialogue for telltale phrases such as "and they can deliver it tomorrow" or "so I've invited them for dinner?" or "they can do it in blue, really quite cheaply.