THE TURTLE MOVES
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*This is a running list, so feel free to add your faves in the comments
A Hat Full of Sky
It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done.
- ‘A Hat Full of Sky’ (Tiffany Aching II)
“There’s always a story,” she said. “It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story change the world.”
- Granny Weatherwax; ‘A Hat Full of Sky’ (Tiffany Aching II)
There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.
- ‘A Hat Full of Sky’ (Tiffany Aching II)
She strode across the moors as if distance was a personal insult.
- ‘A Hat Full of Sky’ (Tiffany Aching II)
“A story gets things done.”
- Granny Weatherwax; ‘A Hat Full of Sky’ (Tiffany Aching II)
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The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else’s story.
- ‘The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents’
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Carpe Jugulum
“Hodgesaargh,” said Granny patiently, “this phoenix laid more than one egg.”
“What? But it can’t! According to mythology—” Oats began.
“Oh, mythology,” said Granny. “Mythology’s just the folktales of people who won ’cos they had bigger swords. They’re just the people to spot the finer points of ornithology, are they? Anyway, one of anything ain’t going to last for very long, is it? Firebirds have got enemies, same as everything else.”
- ‘Carpe Jugulum’
“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that–”
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
- Granny Weatherwax; ‘Carpe Jugulum’
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Equal Rites
“Cursing?” said Esk, weakly.
“Aye, cursing, my girl, and no need to look so shocked! You’ll curse, when the need comes. When you’re alone, and there’s no help to hand, and—”
She hesitated and, uncomfortably aware of Esk’s questioning eyes, finished lamely: “—and people aren’t showing respect. Make it loud, make it complicated, make it long, and make it up if you have to, but it’ll work all right. Next day, when they hit their thumb or they fall off a ladder or their dog drops dead they’ll remember you. They’ll behave better next time.”
- ‘Equal Rites’
“Didn’t I always say to you that if you use magic you should go through the world like a knife goes through water? Didn’t I say that?”
Esk, mesmerized like a cornered rabbit, nodded.
“And you thought that was just old Granny’s way, didn’t you? But the fact is that if you use magic you draw attention to yourself. From Them. They watch the world all the time. Ordinary minds are just vague to them, they hardly bother with them, but a mind with magic in it shines out, you see, it’s a beacon to them. It’s not darkness that calls Them, it’s light, light that creates the shadows.”
- ‘Equal Rites’
…she was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don’t apply to you.
- ‘Equal Rites’
Esk, of course, had not been trained, and it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you’re attempting can’t be done. A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a halfbrick in the path of the bicycle of history.
- ‘Equal Rites’
[Granny] stood up. “Let’s find this Great Hall, then. No time to waste.”
“Um, women aren’t allowed in,” said Esk.
Granny stopped in the doorway. Her shoulders rose. She turned around very slowly.
“What did you say?” she said. “Did these old ears deceive me, and don’t say they did because they didn’t.”
“Sorry,” said Esk. “Force of habit.”
- ‘Equal Rites’
“A witch relied too much on words ever to go back on them.”
- ‘Equal Rites’
“All we need to do is go back to your place and wait.”
“What for?”
“The screams or the bangs or the fireballs or whatever,” Granny said vaguely.
“That’s heartless!”
“Oh, I expect they’ve got it coming to them.”
- ‘Equal Rites’
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Hogfather
“He’s right, though,” said Susan. “Gods don’t die. Never completely die . . . ” There’s always somewhere, she told herself. Inside some stone, perhaps, or the words of a song, or riding the mind of some animal, or maybe in a whisper on the wind. They never entirely go, they hang onto the world by the tip of a fingernail, always fighting to find a way back. Once a god, always a god.
- ‘Hogfather’
…one of the symptoms of those going completely yo-yo was that they broke out in chronic cats.
- ‘Hogfather’
Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.
- ‘Hogfather’
“That’s how it goes, master. Master?”
NO. Death stood up. THIS IS HOW IT SHOULDN’T GO.
- ‘Hogfather’
Ridcully pulled open a drawer in his hat and extracted his pipe and a pouch of herbal tobacco. He struck a match on the side of the washing engine. This was turning out to be a far more interesting evening than he had anticipated.
- ‘Hogfather’
“But . . . little match girls dying in the snow is part of what the Hogswatch spirit is all about, master,” said Albert desperately. “I mean, people hear about it and say, ‘We may be poorer than a disabled banana and only have mud and old boots to eat, but at least we’re better off than the poor little match girl,’ master.”
- ‘Hogfather’
HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
- ‘Hogfather’
“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need . . . fantasies to make life bearable.”
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME . . . SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”
MY POINT EXACTLY.
- ‘Hogfather’
ALBERT SAID THERE OUGHT TO BE SNOW ON IT, BUT IT APPEARS TO HAVE MELTED, said Death. IT IS, OF COURSE, A HOGSWATCH CARD.
“Oh . . .”
THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN A ROBIN ON IT AS WELL, BUT I HAD CONSIDERABLE DIFFICULTY IN GETTING IT TO STAY ON.
- ‘Hogfather’
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I Shall Wear Midnight
I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people.
- ‘I Shall Wear Midnight’ (Tiffany Aching
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The Last Hero
I have no use for people who have learned the limits of the possible.
- ‘The Last Hero’
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The Light Fantastic
“Where I come from priests are holy men who have dedicated themselves to lives of poverty, good works and the study of the nature of God.”
Rincewind considered this novel proposition.
“No sacrifices?” he said.
“Absolutely not.”
Rincewind gave up. “Well,” he said, “they don’t sound very holy to me.”
- ‘The Light Fantastic’
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Lords and Ladies
She seemed to have spent her whole life trying to make herself small, trying to be polite, apologizing when people walked over her, trying to be good-mannered. And what had happened? People had treated her as if she was small and polite and good-mannered.
- ‘Lords and Ladies’
You had to repay, good or bad. There was more than one type of obligation. That’s what people never really understood, she told herself as she stepped back into the kitchen. Magrat hadn’t understood it, nor that new girl. Things had to balance. You couldn’t set out to be a good witch or a bad witch. It never worked for long. All you could try to be was a witch, as hard as you could.
- ‘Lords and Ladies’
“I don’t hold with paddlin’ with the occult,” said Granny firmly. “Once you start paddlin’ with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you’re believing in gods. And then you’re in trouble.”
“But all them things exist,” said Nanny Ogg.
“That’s no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages ’em.”
- ‘Lords and Ladies’
Magrat thumped the breastplate.
“Fairly good fit,” she said, defying Shawn to point out that in certain areas there was quite a lot of air between the metal and Magrat. “Not that a few tucks and a rivet here and there wouldn’t help. Don’t you think it looks good?”
“Oh, yes,” said Shawn. “Uh. Sheet iron is really you.”
- ‘Lords and Ladies’
“Personal’s not the same as important. People just think it is.”1
- Granny Weatherwax; ‘Lords and Ladies’
“I had to learn. All my life. The hard way. And the hard way’s pretty hard, but not so hard as the easy way. I learned. From the trolls and the dwarfs and from people. Even from pebbles.”
- Granny Weatherwax; ‘Lords and Ladies’
“What don’t die can’t live. What don’t live can’t change. What don’t change can’t learn.”
- Granny Weatherwax; ‘Lords and Ladies’
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvelous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
- ‘Lords and Ladies’
“I ain’t against gods and goddesses, in their place. But they’ve got to be the ones we make ourselves. Then we can take ’em to bits for the parts when we don’t need ’em anymore, see?”
- Granny Weatherwax; ‘Lords and Ladies’
…but she did have a quality that in anyone not wearing a battered pointy hat and an antique black dress might have been called poise. Absolute poise. It would be hard to imagine her making an awkward movement unless she wanted to.
- ‘Lords and Ladies’
“The price for being the best is always having to be the best.”
- Granny Weatherwax; ‘Lords and Ladies’
It’s not a face you can talk to. Open your mouth and you’re suddenly the focus of a penetrating stare which declares: what you’re about to say had better be interesting.
- ‘Lords and Ladies’
“A wizard’s only a priest without a god and a damp handshake.”
- Granny Weatherwax; ‘Lords and Ladies’
“Er…” said Weaver. “Didn’t recognize you in your flying hat, miss.”
- ‘Lords and Ladies’
“They’ve got,” she spat the word, “style. Beauty. Grace. That’s what matters. If cats looked like frogs we’d realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That’s what people remember. They remember the glamour. All the rest of it, all the truth of it, becomes…old wives’ tales.”
- ‘Granny Weatherwax; ‘Lords and Ladies’
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Maskerade
Nanny had one additional little talent, which was a mind like a buzzsaw behind a face like an elderly apple.
- ‘Maskerade’
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Men at Arms
Cuddy had only been a guard for a few days, but already he had absorbed one important and basic fact: it is almost impossible for anyone to be in a street without breaking the law.
- ‘Men at Arms’
Individuals aren’t naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are…well…human beings.
- Men at Arms’
“He killed Angua. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
…bing…bing…bing…bing…
Carrot nodded.
“Yes. But personal isn’t the same as important.”2
- ‘Men at Arms’
Sometimes it’s better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
- ‘Men at Arms’
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Mort
“He doesn’t like wizards and witches much,” Mort volunteered.
“Nobody likes a smartass,” she said with some satisfaction. “We give him trouble, you see.”
- ‘Mort’
“And they was kings in those days, real kings, not like the sort you get now. They was monarchs,” continued Albert, carefully pouring some tea into his saucer and fanning it primly with the end of his muffler. “I mean, they was wise and fair, well, fairly wise. And they wouldn’t think twice about cutting your head off soon as look at you,” he added approvingly. “And all the queens were tall and pale and wore them balaclava helmet things—”
“Wimples?” said Mort.
“Yeah, them, and the princesses were beautiful as the day is long and so noble they, they could pee through a dozen mattresses—”
“What?”
Albert hesitated. “Something like that, anyway,” he conceded.
- ‘Mort’
‘Thee next day, yt being raining, Alberto’—
“It’s written in Old,” he said. “Before they invented spelling.
- ‘Mort’
He’d been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.
- ‘Mort’
“Something very fundamental seems to have gone wrong, you see. You’re dead in every sense but the, er, actual. I mean, the cards think you’re dead. Your lifeline thinks you’re dead. Everything and everyone thinks you’re dead.”
“I don’t,” said Keli, but her voice was less than confident.
“I’m afraid your opinion doesn’t count.”
“But people can see and hear me!”
“The first thing you learn when you enroll at Unseen University, I’m afraid, is that people don’t pay much attention to that sort of thing. It’s what their minds tell them that’s important.”
- ‘Mort’
“Mort,” said Mort automatically.
- ‘Mort’
When it came to determination, you could have cracked rocks on her jaw.
- ‘Mort’
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Moving Pictures
The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.
- ‘Moving Pictures’
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Reaper Man
“If anyone’s going to bury a wizard at a crossroads with a stake hammered through him, then wizards ought to do it. After all, we’re his friends.”
- Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully; ‘Reaper Man’
“But now the burden is removed. Rejoice. That is all. There will be a short transitional period before a suitable candidate presents itself, and then normal service will be resumed. In the meantime, we apologize for any unavoidable inconvenience caused by superfluous life effects.”
- ‘Reaper Man’
People get exactly the wrong idea about belief. They think it works back to front. They think the sequence is, first object, then belief. In fact, it works the other way. Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiraling into a potter’s wheel. That’s how gods get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief résumé of the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn’t be divine.
- ‘Reaper Man’
It was amazing how many friends you could make by being bad at things, provided you were bad enough to be funny.
- ‘Reaper Man’
It was huge and black and had things on it, like bird wings and wax cherries and hat-pins; Carmen Miranda could have worn that hat to the funeral of a continent. Mrs. Cake traveled underneath it as the basket travels under a balloon. People often found themselves talking to her hat.
- ‘Reaper Man’
NO CROWN, said Bill Door, looking directly into the smoke. No CROWN. ONLY THE HARVEST.
- ‘Reaper Man’
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The Sea and Little Fishes
Many people could say things in a cutting way, Nanny knew. But Granny Weatherwax could listen in a cutting a way. She could make something sound stupid just by hearing it.
- ‘The Sea and Little Fishes’ (A Blink of the Screen)
“I understand Miss Weatherwax is a very proud woman,” said Letice.
Nanny Ogg puffed at her pipe again. “You might as well say the sea is full of water,” she said.
The other witches were silent for a moment.
“I dare say that was a valuable comment,” said Letice, “but I didn’t understand it.”
“If there ain’t no water in the sea, it ain’t the sea,” said Nanny Ogg. “It’s just a damn great hole in the ground. Thing about Esme is—” Nanny took another noisy pull at the pipe. “She’s all pride, see? She ain’t just a proud person.”
“Then perhaps she should learn to be more humble—”
“What’s she got to be humble about?” said Nanny sharply.
- ‘The Sea and Little Fishes’ (A Blink of the Screen)
“I did start out in witchcraft to get boys, to tell you the truth.”
“Think I don’t know that?”
“What did you start out to get, Esme?”
Granny stopped, and looked up at the frosty sky and then down at the ground.
“Dunno,” she said at last. “Even, I suppose.”
- ‘The Sea and Little Fishes’ (A Blink of the Screen)
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The Shepherd’s Crown
“Esme Weatherwax hadn’t done nice. She’d done what was needed.”
- ‘The Shepherd’s Crown’ (Tiffany Aching V)
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Small Gods
…there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
- ‘Small Gods’
“This Is Religion, Boy. Not Comparison Bloody Shopping! You Shall Not Subject Your God To Market Forces!”
- ‘Small Gods’
Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.
- ‘Small Gods
That was the best and the worst of civil war, at least at the start—everyone wore the same uniform. It was much easier when you picked enemies who were a different color or at least spoke with a funny accent. You could call them “gooks” or something. It made things easier.
- ‘Small Gods’
“Well, the way I see it, logic is only a way of being ignorant by numbers.”
- ‘Small Gods’
“I think,” he said, “I think, if you want thousands, you have to fight for one.”
- ‘Small Gods’
“I thought it would all be over when Vorbis was dead.”
Didactylos stared into his inner world.
“It takes a long time for people like Vorbis to die. They leave echoes in history.”
- ‘Small Gods’
HE WAS A MURDERER, said Death. AND A CREATOR OF MURDERERS. A TORTURER. WITHOUT PASSION. CRUEL. CALLOUS. COMPASSIONLESS.
“Yes. I know. He’s Vorbis,” said Brutha. Vorbis changed people. Sometimes he changed them into dead people. But he always changed them. That was his triumph.
He sighed.
“But I’m me,” he said.
- ‘Small Gods’
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Soul Music
The important thing, she decided, was to stay calm. There was always a logical explanation for everything, even if you had to make it up.
- ‘Soul Music’
The universe danced toward life. Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite tendency toward awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time.
- ‘Soul Music’
No one had taught Susan about the power of belief, or at least about the power of belief in a combination of high magical potential and low reality stability such as existed on the Discworld.
Belief makes a hollow place. Something has to roll in to fill it.
- ‘Soul Music’
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Snuff
Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to.
- ‘Snuff’
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The Wee Free Men
“The thing about witchcraft,” said Mistress Weatherwax, “is that it’s not like school at all. First you get the test, and then afterward you spend years findin’ out how you passed it. It’s a bit like life in that respect.”
- ‘The Wee Free Men’ (Tiffany Aching I)
“And what do you really do?” said Tiffany.
The thin witch hesitated for a moment, and then: “We look to . . . the edges,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “There’s a lot of edges, more than people know. Between life and death, this world and the next, night and day, right and wrong . . . an’ they need watchin’. We watch ’em, we guard the sum of things. And we never ask for any reward. That’s important.”
- ‘The Wee Free Men’ (Tiffany Aching I)
“It’s like stories,” said Tiffany. “It’s all right. I worked it out. This is the school, isn’t it? The magic place? The world. Here. And you don’t realize it until you look. Do you know the pictsies think this world is heaven? We just don’t look. You can’t give lessons on witchcraft. Not properly. It’s all about how you are . . . you, I suppose.”
- ‘The Wee Free Men’ (Tiffany Aching I)
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Wintersmith
She sat silently in her rocking chair. Some people are good at talking, but Granny Weatherwax was good at silence. She could sit so quiet and still that she faded. You forgot she was there. The room became empty.
Tiffany thought of it as the I’m-not-here spell, if it was a spell. She reasoned that everyone had something inside them that told the world they were there. That was why you could often sense when someone was behind you, even if they were making no sound at all. You were receiving their I-am-here signal.
Some people had a very strong one. They were the people who got served first in shops. Granny Weatherwax had an I-am-here signal that bounced off the mountains when she wanted it to; when she walked into a forest, all the wolves and bears ran out the other side. She could turn it off, too. She was doing that now. Tiffany was having to concentrate to see her. Most of her mind was telling her that there was no one there at all.
- ‘Wintersmith’ (Tiffany Aching III)
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Witches Abroad
“Gooden day, big-feller mine host! Trois beers por favor avec us, silver plate.”
“What’s a silver plate got to do with it?” demanded Granny.
“It’s foreign for please,” said Nanny.
- ‘Witches Abroad’
He was a wicked man tho not I think as wicked as L, for she says she wants to make it a Magic Kingdom, a Happy and Peaseful place, and wen people do that look out for Spies on every corner and no manne dare speak out, for who dare speke out against Evile done in the name of Happyness and Pease?
- from Desirata’s notebooks, about the city of Genua; ‘Witches Abroad’
All witches are very conscious of stories. They can feel stories, in the same way that a bather in a little pool can feel the unexpected trout.
Knowing how stories work is almost all the battle.
For example, when an obvious innocent sits down with three experienced card sharpers and says “How do you play this game, then?” someone is about to be shaken down until their teeth fall out.
- ‘Witches Abroad’
The trouble with witches is that they’ll never run away from things they really hate. And the trouble with small furry animals in a corner is that, just occasionally, one of them’s a mongoose.
- ‘Witches Abroad’
Granny Weatherwax wouldn’t know what a pattern of quantum inevitability was if she found it eating her dinner. If you mentioned the words “paradigms of space-time” to her she’d just say “What?” But that didn’t mean she was ignorant. It just meant that she didn’t have any truck with words, especially gibberish. She just knew that there were certain things that happened continually in human history, like three-dimensional clichés. Stories.
- ‘Witches Abroad’
“But Nanny…Gytha…” said Magrat.
“Hmm?”
“All that…stuff…she was saying, when we were traveling. It was so…so cold. Wasn’t it? Not wishing for things, not using magic to help people, not being able to do that fire thing—and then she went and did all those things! What am I supposed to make of that?”
“Ah, well,” said Nanny. “It’s all according to the general and the specific, right?”
“What does that mean?” Magrat lay down on the bed.
“Means when Esme uses words like ‘Everyone’ and ‘No one’ she doesn’t include herself.”
- ‘Witches Abroad’
“This is Legba, a dark and dangerous spirit,” said Mrs. Gogol. She leaned closer and spoke out of the corner of her mouth. “Between you and me, he just a big black cockerel. But you know how it is.”
“It pays to advertise,” Nanny agreed. “This is Greebo. Between you and me, he’s a fiend from hell.”
“Well, he’s a cat,” said Mrs. Gogol, generously. “It’s only to be expected.”
- ‘Witches Abroad’
Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.
- ‘Witches Abroad’
“You can’t go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it’s just a cage.”
- ‘Witches Abroad’
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Wyrd Sisters
“Actors,” said Granny, witheringly. “As if the world weren’t full of enough history without inventing more.”
- ‘Wyrd Sisters’
“There were screams,” said the Fool, who couldn’t help feeling they weren’t taking things seriously enough.
“I daresay,” said Granny, pushing him aside and stepping over a writhing taproot. “If anyone locked me in a dungeon, there’d be screams.”
- Granny Weatherwax; ‘Wyrd Sisters’
“Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things. Well known fact,” said Granny. “But I don’t hold with encouraging it.”
- ‘Wyrd Sisters’
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Footnotes
- When Carrot says this (slightly rephrased) line one year later in ‘Men at Arms’ after Cruces reveals that Carrot is heir, Vimes marvels: “‘Personal isn’t the same as important.’ What sort of person could think like that? And it dawned on him that while Ankh in the past had had its share of evil rulers, and simply bad rulers, it had never yet come under the heel of a good ruler. That might be the most terrifying prospect of all.” ↩
- This line appears one year earlier in 1992’s “Lords and Ladies” when Granny Weatherwax says it* to Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully.
*Slightly modified version: “Personal’s not the same as important. People just think it is.” ↩
serene 