"Nac Mac Feegle! The Wee Free Men! Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna' be fooled again!"

"Whut's the plan, Rob?" said one of them.
"OK lads, this is what we'll do. As soon as we see somethin', we'll attack it. Right?"
The best plans are the simplest ones ...

First Sight is when you can see what's really there, not what your head tells you ought to be there.

Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what you want to happen; witches tell you what's going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough, witches tend to be more accurate but less popular.

"No," said Tiffany, patiently. "It's about zoology."
"Zoology, eh? That's a big word, isn't it."
"No, actually it isn't," said Tiffany. "Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short."

She'd read the dictionary all the way through. No one told her you weren't supposed to.

They were faraway cheeses with strange sounding names, cheeses like Treble Wibbley, Waney Tasty, Old Argg, Red Runny and the legendary Lancre Blue, which had to be nailed to the table to stop it attacking other cheeses.

"You're very yellow for a toad."
"I've been ill," said the toad.
"And you talk," said Tiffany.
"You only have my word for it," said the toad. "You can't prove anything."

"Witches have animals they can talk to, called familiars. Like your toad there."
"I'm not familiar," said a voice from among the paper flowers. "I'm just slightly presumptuous."

Tiffany Aching was lying on her stomach by the river, tickling trout. She liked to hear them laugh. It came up in bubbles.

... finally there was The Goode Childe's Booke of Faerie Tales, so old that that it belonged to an age when there were far more 'e's around.

"Now ... if you trust in yourself ..."
"Yes?"
"... and believe in your dreams ..."
"Yes?"
"... and follow your star..."
"Yes?"
"... you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy."
Advice from a proper witch.

"If you have a grandmother who can pass on her pointy hat to you, that saves a great deal of expense. They are incredibly hard to come by, especially ones strong enough to withstand falling farmhouses."
Another piece of advice from a proper witch.

No words can describe what a Feegle in a kilt looks like upside down, so they won't try.

"I'm up here most o' the time anyway, because I'm studying to become a gonnagle." The young Feegle flourished a set of mousepipes. "An' they willnae let me play doon there on acoount o' them sayin' my playin' sounds like a spider tryin' to fart through its ears, mistress."

"I can see we're going to get along like a house on fire," said Miss Tick. "There may be no survivors."

"What's inflammable mean?"
"It means it catches fire!"
"OK, OK, dinnae panic. No belchin', and none of youse is to tak' a leak anywhere near any naked flames, OK?"

"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"

"Anyone with half a mind could see that."
Miss Tick sighed. "Yes. But sometimes it's so hard to find half a mind when you need one."

"All the birds and the beasts up here know it's good luck to be friends wi' the Nac Mac Feegle, mistress."
"They do?"
"Well, to tell ye the truth, mistress, it's more that they know that it's unlucky not to be friends wi' the Nac Mac Feegle."

"Them as can do, has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices."
Granny Aching's philosophy of life...

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