Mister Teatime had a truly brilliant mind, but it was brilliant like a fractured mirror, all marvellous facets and rainbows but, ultimately, also something that was broken.

Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

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The teacher’s eyes narrowed further. Children like Tiffany were bad news.

Samuel Vimes dreamed about Clues.

He had a jaundiced view of Clues. He instinctively distrusted them. They got in the way.

And he distrusted the kind of man who’d take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, “Ah, my dear sir, I can tell you nothing except that he is a left-handed stonemason who has spent some years in the merchant navy and has recently fallen on hard times,“ and then unroll a lot of supercilious commentary about calluses and stance and the state of a man’s boots, when exactly the same comments could apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because he’d been doing a spot of bricklaying for a home barbecue pit, and had been tattooed once when he was drunk and seventeen* and in fact got seasick on a wet pavement. What arrogance! What an insult to the rich and chaotic variety of human experience!

It was the same way with more static evidence. The footprints in the flowerbed were probably in the real world left by the window-cleaner. The scream in the night was quite likely a man getting out of bed and stepping sharply on an upturned hairbrush.

The real world was far too real to leave neat little hints. It was full of too many things. It wasn’t by eliminating the impossible that you got at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities. You worked away, patiently asking questions and looking hard at things. You walked and talked, and in your heart you just hoped like hell that some bugger’s nerve’d crack and he’d give himself up.

*These terms are often synonomous

Feet of Clay, Terry Pratchett

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(via Pinterest)

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Kick Ass Ladies - Tiffany Aching (Discworld)

Of all the Discworld books the only group of characters I love more than Vimes and the Watch are Tiffany Aching and the Nac Mac Feegles. And it really just comes down to how much ass Tiffany kicks.

Best place to start when explaining why Tiffany is so awesome is the fact that the Feegles follow her like she’s their general. They (mostly) listen and do what she says. The Feegles who (otherwise) listen to absolutely no one and are known to attract chaos and mayhem like little wee blue magnets.

Tiffany is also a witch. A very highly sensible, logical minded witch. A witch with the potential to be more bad ass than Granny Weatherwax. A witch who accepts the responsibilities that come with being a witch.

All of the books featuring Tiffany center around Tiffany taking responsibility for her actions and their consequences (with minimal whining). Being as Tiffany is a witch with some considerable potential her mistakes can have some rather interesting and extreme consequences. She doesn’t let this stop her from doing what’s right.

You had to hand it to human beings. They had one of the strangest powers in the universe. […] No other species anywhere in the world had invented boredom. Perhaps it was boredom, not intelligence, that had propelled them up the evolutionary ladder.

[…]

And along with this had come an associated power, to make things normal. The world changed mightily, and within a few days humans considered it was normal. They had the most amazing ability to shut out and forget what didn’t fit. They told themselves little stories to explain away the inexplicable, to make things normal.

Source: Thief of Time, p. 215f.

People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they’re standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don’t quite look like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn’t a time. It’s a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.

Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

What can harm us if we are armed with the truth?”
“Well, a crossbow bolt can, e.g., go right through your eye and out the back of your head.

(Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

She could feel a future trying to land on her.
She caught herself saying “poot!“ and “dang!” when she wanted to swear, and using pink writing paper.
She’d got a reputation for being calm and capable in a crisis.
Next thing she knew she’d be making shortbread and apple pies as good as her mother’s, and then there’d be no hope for her.

Terry Pratchett, Maskerade

PEOPLE’S WHOLE LIVES *DO* PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED ‘LIVING’.

Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent

courtesy Jason Anthony’s Discworld Monthly