We sleepwalk through our lives, because how could we live if we were always this awake?

Nigel gave the lamp a cautious buff and small smoking red letters appeared in the air. "Hi," Nigel read aloud, "Do not put down the lamp because your custom is important to us. Please leave a wish after the tone and, very shortly, it will be our command. In the meantime, have a nice eternity."

Destiny is important, see, but people go wrong when they think it controls them. It's the other way around.

'Don't think of it as dying,' said Death. 'Just think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush.'

This was not a fairy-tale castle and there was no such thing as a fairy-tale ending, but sometimes you could threaten to kick the handsome prince in the ham-and-eggs.

If you don't turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else's story.

The rising sun managed to peek around the vast column of smoke that forever rose from Ankh-Morpork, City of Cities, illustrating almost up to the edge of space that smoke means progress or, at least, people setting fire to things.