My character - and for that matter my worst habits - could only be described by someone else. You can't open a box with the crowbar inside it.

At some time in the recent past someone had decided to brighten the ancient corridors of the University by painting them, having some vague notion that Learning Should Be Fun. It hadn’t worked. It’s a fact known throughout the universes that no matter how carefully the colors are chosen, institutional decor ends up as either vomit green, unmentionable brown, nicotine yellow or surgical appliance pink. By some little-understood process of sympathetic resonance, corridors painted in those colors always smell slightly of boiled cabbage—even if no cabbage is ever cooked in the vicinity.

I think you should be proud of not being worse than just deeply introverted and socially maladjusted.

I'm glad a genre writer has got a knighthood, but stunned that it was me.

That's one form of magic, of course." "What, just knowing things?" "Knowing things that other people don't know.

Around it are those countries which, according to History, constitute the civilised world ie, a world that can support historians

But the helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armorers had made a new gleaming breastplate with useless gold ornamentation on it. Sam Vimes felt like a class traitor every time he wore it. He hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armor. It was gilt by association.