"I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people."
"At such times the universe gets a little closer to us. They are strange times, times of beginnings and endings. Dangerous and powerful. And we feel it even if we don't know what it is. These times are not necessarily good, and not necessarily bad. In fact, what they are depends on what *we* are."
"Well, child? Aren't you going to try to turn me into some kind of unspeakable creature?I don't think I shall bother, madam, seeing as you are making such a good job of it yourself!"
"A stink. A stench. A foulness in her mind, dreadful and unforgiving. A compost of horrible ideas and rotted thoughts that made her want to take our her brain and wash it."
"Letitia! What a name. Halfway between a salad and a sneeze."
"I know it’s not the right thing to say to a lady, miss, but you are sweating like a pig!""My mother always said that horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies merely glow…""Is that so? Well, miss, you are glowing like a pig!"
"Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things."
"Fire is easy to work with if you keep your mind clear, but pain . . . pain fights back. Pain is alive. Pain is the enemy."
"She heard him mutter, 'Can you take away this grief?''I'm sorry,' she replied. 'Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for."
"It's witchcraft with all the crusts cut off, and real witchcraft is ALL crusts."
"There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can’t, but I can change the present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out to be a past worth having."
"What was it that Granny Weatherwax had said once? "Evil starts when you begin to treat people as things". And right now it would happen if you thought there was a thing called a father, and a thing called a mother, and a thing called a daughter, and a thing called a cottage, and told yourself that if you put them all together you had a thing called a happy family."
"She had heard it said that, before you could understand anybody, you needed to walk a mile in their shoes, which did not make a whole lot of sense, because probably AFTER you had walked a mile in their shoes, you would understand that they were chasing you and accusing you of the theft of a pair of shoes--although, of course, you could probably outrun them, owing to their lack of footwear."
"One day I'll work out what it is you are saying, my lad, and then you'll be in trouble."
"I’m a witch. It’s what we do. When it’s nobody else’s business, it’s my business."