IT'S THE EXPRESSION ON THEIR LITTLE FACES I LIKE, said the Hogfather. "You mean sort of fear and awe and not knowing whether to laugh or cry or wet their pants?" YES. NOW THAT IS WHAT I CALL BELIEF.

Dedication: My thanks to the people who showed me that opera was stranger than I could imagine. I can best repay their kindness by not mentioning their names here.

They can tak' oour lives but they canna tak' oour troousers!

Did I do anything last night that suggested I was sane?

When a man is tired of Ankh-Morpork, he is tired of ankle-deep slurry.

Granny Weatherwas was not a jouster in the lists of love, but, as an intelligent onlooker, she knew how the game was played.

There should be a word for that brief period just after waking when the mind is full of warm pink nothing. You lie there entirely empty of thought, except for a growing suspicion that heading towards you, like a sockful of damp sand in a nocturnal alleyway, are all the recollections you'd really rather do without, and which amount to the fact that the only mitigating factor in your horrible future is the certainty that it will be quite short.