Lords and Ladies Quotes

The universe doesn’t much care if you tread on a butterfly. There are plenty more butterflies. Gods might note the fall of a sparrow, but they don’t make any effort to catch them.

“And what does the winner get?” said Diamanda. There was just a trace of uncertainty in her voice now�
“Oh, the winner gets to win,” said Granny Weatherwax. “That’s what it’s all about. Don’t bother to see us out. You didn’t see us in.”
Diamanda and Granny Weatherwax

“Some people might say this is important.”
“No. It’s just personal. Personal’s not the same as important. People just think it is.”
Mustrum Ridcully and Granny Weatherwax

“You’ve been up at the Stones, haven’t you! Trying to hold back the Gentry.”
“Of course.” said Granny. Her voice wasn’t faint. She wasn’t swaying. But her voice wasn’t faint and she wasn’t swaying, Nanny Ogg could see, because Granny Weatherwax’s body was in the grip of Granny Weatherwax’s mind.
Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax
“You can’t say ‘if this didn’t happen then that would have happened’ because you don’t know everything that might have happened. You might think something’d be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible. You can’t say ‘If only I’d�’ because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you’ll never know. You’ve gone past. So there’s no use thinking of it. So I don’t.”
Granny Weatherwax to Mustrum Ridcully
“Stand before your god, bow before your king, and kneel before your man. Recipe for a happy life, that is,” said Nanny, to the world in general.
Nanny Ogg

what we have here is not a nice girl, as generally understood. For one thing, she’s not beautiful. There’s a certain set to the jaw and arch to the nose that might, with a following wind and in the right light, be called handsome by a good-natured liar. Also, there’s a certain glint in her eye generally possessed by those people who have found that they are more intelligent than most people around them but who haven’t yet learned that one of the most intelligent things they can do is prevent said people ever finding this out.
re: a young Granny Weatherwax

“he can’t abide elves. They smell wrong to him.”
The Librarian flared his nostrils.
Magrat didn’t know much about jungles, but she thought about apes in trees, smelling the rank of the tiger. Apes never admired the sleek of the fur and the burn of the eye, because they were too well aware of the teeth of the mouth.
“Yes,” she said. “I expect they would.”
Magrat, Ponder, and the Librarian

old I may be, and hag I may be, but stupid I ain’t. You’re no kind of goddess. 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? And elves far away in fairyland, well, maybe that’s something people need to get ’emselves through the iron times. But I ain’t having elves here. You make us want what we can’t have and what you give us is worth nothing and what you take is everything and all there is left for us is the cold hillside, and emptiness, and the laughter of the elves.”
Granny Weather wax

…And sometimes there’s a short cut. A door or a gate. Some standing stones. A tree cleft by lightning, a filing cabinet. Maybe just a spot on some moorland somewhere… A place where THERE is very nearly HERE…
If some people knew where such a spot was, if they had experience of what happens when here and there become entangled, then they might – if they knew how – mark such a spot with certain stones. In the hope that enough daft buggers would take it as a warning and keep away.
re: the Dancers