u/Lotus2024

I asked for help finding a Discworld quote to engrave on a York Ghost. People were wonderfully helpful, and one suggestion was the infamous Granny Weatherwax quote. I somehow accidentally cut and paste it into Google and was highly amused when this came back as an Out of Cheese error:

“You are absolutely not dead yet. Since you are reading and responding here, you are very much alive and well in New Mexico.
If you were wondering if this is the afterlife:
The surroundings: You are in New Mexico.
The time: It is currently Friday, May 22, 2026.
If you just survived a wild weekend or an exhausting week, the fact that you can search for answers means you have successfully made it to the other side. Grab some water, take a breath, and enjoy being alive!”

A friend is having something custom engraved for me, but it can’t be more than 22 characters (and spaces in between words, plus punctuation, count as characters). Any suggestions on a Discworld quote that could fit those parameters?

EDIT TO ADD: Thank you all so much! Your suggestions are wonderful. The text will be printed on a little porcelain York ghost. (I should add—I have to win him in the monthly website order lottery, so it’s not a sure thing I’ll even get him.) Right now I’m leaning toward “The turtle moves” since that’s my favorite book, but “I aten’t dead yet” has some strong personal significance too. Please keep the suggestions coming. I appreciate them!!

So. I’m walking down Gibson. This bus is a few blocks back and has been following me, honking. It finally pulls up to a bus stop as I’m passing it and the driver yells, “I’m here!”

I’m like … “Wha?”

He’s like, “I saw you missed me back there.”

“Oh. No, I’m good, thanks.”

“You mean you’re just walking? You ain’t got a car or something?”

“I have one. I’m just walking to walk.”

The look he gave me …

It was coincidental, following from a long Reddit conversation I just had about walking in Albuquerque. I’ve been running my errands mostly on foot for 20 years, but I’m apparently not supposed to do that for safety’s sake. Not at all sure why. We have tons of sidewalks. The WALKS is explicit.

Today I woke up and walked to the post office, then to the bank, then to a place to do some blood work, then to a cafe, then to a library. All told, about 10 miles. It was beautiful weather. I chatted with random people who were polite and caused me no problems whatsoever. No cars attempted to run me over. It was a really nice day.

Am I going to walk those distances when it gets hot? No. THAT would be dangerous. But doing what I’ve been doing forever has caused me no issues so far as long as I don’t jaywalk, don’t walk at night, don’t keep my eyes glued to my phone, and basically follow common sense. I’ve occasionally made a dumb mistake, and then I obviously learn from that and don’t repeat it.

TL; DR: We have a beautiful city. I hope to keep walking it for many more years.

“Give Sam his due, Vimes thought, he knew how to stand still. He'd have to teach him how to untocus himself, too, so that you could very nearly fade out of sight on a cloudy day.”

Both Vetinari and Vimes practice the art of standing still enough to vanish in Night Watch. A parallel that occurred to me on this read is that the two characters most capable of hiding in plain sight are also the Discworld protagonists who see each other most clearly. Vimes eventually comes to see Vetinari better than anyone else and vice versa.

I wonder if knowing how to be invisible also teaches you how to see more clearly. Kind of akin to the contrast between dark and light, which is a constant Pterry theme.

No specific quote tonight—my thoughts are more generalized as I arrive at Vetinari’s introduction. He’s often referred to as a Machiavellian figure, and I realized on this read how much that bothers me. Machiavelli was cruel for cruelty’s sake. He was a narcissist, and his doings were all for personal gain. None of that describes Vetinari.

Even at the young age we meet him in Night Watch, he’s uninterested in purposeless violence, or he’d have killed Downey. Every decision he takes is carefully reasoned and has a purpose. Eventually, that purpose becomes to protect Ankh-Morpork. Vimes becomes a cog Vetinari sees fit to manipulate to protect the city. But again, I just don’t see the direct Machiavelli parallel. What other historical figures do you think his character might have been inspired by?

“This one's an Unmentionable, said Vimes.
Tried to kill me. Needs some medicine!”

Such very simple words, but I think they’re reflective of a core Discworld theme—justice for ALL. Not just the people we like or whose side we’re on. Vimes certainly wants the Unmentionable to pay for his crimes. He has to stop himself from killing the man. But his moral code requires that *everyone* be treated fairly. Medical care. A trial (of sorts). And appropriate punishment thereafter.

Given the world today, where polarization is a fact of life—you’re on one side or the other, and meeting in the middle is increasingly unthinkable—it’s yet another Pratchett theme that strikes me as more powerful and relevant than ever.

What are your thoughts?

May 4

“It was Sybil. The voice was right, and the eyes were right, and the way she stood was right. But the age wasn't right. This was a girl, far too young to be Sybil...
She looked from him to the prone butler. 'Did you do that to Forsythe?' she said.
1... er... I... it's ... there's been a mistake ..! Vimes murmured, backing away.
But Sybil was already pulling a sword off the wall. It wasn't there for show. Vimes couldn't remember if his wife had ever learned to fence, but several feet of edged weapon is quite threatening enough when wielded by an angry amateur. Amateurs sometimes get lucky.”

Not much depth to my commentary tonight—I just love Sybil. I love where Sybil started, as depicted here, and where Sybil ended up. Furthermore, I love Pratchett’s female characters so much that words escape me. I’m not sure any male author has ever had better insight into the workings of the other half of the species. He is SO GOOD at writing women.

As a woman. As a writer. As an editor who works with authors daily. I stand in awe of STP’s abilities in all ways, but especially in this respect.

What are some examples of outstanding female character moments in the Discworld (or just in Night Watch, if you prefer) that you all particularly enjoy?

May 3

“Yes, thought Vimes. That’s the way it was. Privilege, which just means private law. Two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it.”

I didn’t know the etymology of “privilege” until reading this. The second part of the quote—those that make it/break it—is self-evident and all too common in our society. But the fact that the word literally means people who make their own laws … I don’t know. That really reinforces so much of what has happened in the world to cause myriad horrors, past and present. Not to mention the core of so many of STP’s books.

Maybe it’s obvious to other readers, but it’s a nuance that had always eluded me until I picked up on that line during this read.

What are your thoughts on this?

May 2

“…he smiled all the time, in a cheerful chirpy sort of way, and he acted like the kind of rascal who made a dodgy living selling gold watches that go green after a week. And he appeared to be convinced, utterly convinced, that he never did anything really wrong. He'd stand there amid the carnage, blood on his hands and stolen jewellery in his pocket, and with an expression of injured innocence declare, 'Me?
What did I do?'

And it was believable right up until you looked hard into those cheeky, smiling eyes, and saw, deep down, the demons looking back.”

I found this passage interesting because initially it could lead you to think of CMOT Dibbler. And he knows his food can kill people. He’s a conman, through and through. He’s not out to hurt anyone, but so long as he survives, the charming rascal looks the other way at what happens when his wares are consumed.

So often, a major Pratchett theme is the fine line between us and them/good and evil, etc., and the line between Carcer and Dibbler is something that bears mulling over. Imagine how dangerous a psychopathic version of CMOT would be. What are your thoughts?

I’m rereading Night Watch as I usually do at this time of year. I think this year I’m going to post a new quote each day leading up the 25th, a quote which I’m looking at in a new light. I’d love to hear your thoughts on each quote.

May 1 — “And so the criminals had evolved to survive in a society where the law had a very sensitive nose. Scent bombs were the solution. They didn't have to be that dramatic. You just dropped a little flask of pure peppermint or aniseed in the street where a lot of people would walk over it, and suddenly Sergeant Angua was facing a hundred, a thousand criss-crossing trails, and went to bed with a terrible headache.”

Reading that, it suddenly occurs to me that Terry turned Vimes into a sort of Angua in this book. She’s a woman living inside a wolf living inside a woman. And he’s a beast (that’s how he refers to himself more than once in the book) living inside a man living inside a beast. Vimes, who was initially so anti-multi-species integration into the Watch, becomes his own man-wolf, following the plot’s tangled, bewildering scent trail. And that somehow feels very fitting for what is sort of the culminating arc of his character growth.

Maybe that’s all thinking it over way too hard, but that’s what came to mind on this read. I was an English teacher, so I do tend to see subtext even when none might be intended. What are your thoughts?