“...and Magrat was sick all night just at the thought of it and had the dire rear.”

“In a certain light and from a carefully chosen angle, Magrat was not unattractive.”

“Magrat had used a lot of powder to make her face pale and interesting. It combined with the lavishly applied mascara to give the guard the impression that he was looking at two flies that had crashed into a sugar bowl.”

“She never sent the castle to sleep”, said Granny, “that’s just an old wife’s tale. She just stirred up time a little. It’s not as hard as people think, everyone does it all the time. It’s like rubber, is time, you can stretch it to suit yourself.”Magrat was about to say: That’s not right, time is time, every second lasts a second, that’s its job. Then she recalled weeks that had flown past and afternoons that had lasted forever. Some minutes had lasted hours, some hours had gone past so quickly she hadn’t been aware they’d gone past at all.“But that’s just people’s perception, isn’t it?”“Oh yes”, said Granny, “of course it is, it all is, what difference does that make?”

“It's daft, locking us up," said Nanny. "I'd have had us killed.""That's because you're basically good," said Magrat. "The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy.”

“Divers alarums and excursions', she read, uncertainly. 'That means lots of terrible happenings, said Magrat. 'You always put that in plays.'Alarums and what?', said Nanny Ogg, who hadn't been listening.Excursions', said Magrat patienly.Oh.' Nanny Ogg brightened a bit. 'The seaside would be nice,' she said.Oh do shut up, Gytha,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'They're not for you. They're only for divers, like it says. Probably so they can recover from all them alarums.”

“Magrat wondered what it was like, spending your whole life doing something you didn’t want to do. Like being dead, she considered, only worse, the reason being, you were alive to suffer it.”