Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often students, for heaven's sake.

"Multiple exclamation marks," he went on, shaking his head, "are a sure sign of a diseased mind."

There are times when phrases such as 'totally astonished' just don't do the job. I am of course delighted and honoured and, needless to say, flabbergasted.

Insofar as he'd formed any opinion of her, it was that she suffered from misplaced gentility and the mistaken belief that etiquette meant good breeding. She mistook mannerisms for manners.

Because some stories end, but old stories go on, and you gotta dance to the music if you want to stay ahead

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.

Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight, but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-year-old Spanish peasant grandmother.