“Granny Weatherwax was not lost. She wasn't the kind of person who ever became lost. It was just that, at the moment, while she knew exactly where SHE was, she didn't know the position of anywhere else.”

“She was also, by the standards of other people, lost. She would not see it like that. She knew where she was, it was just that everywhere else didn't.”

“Many people could say things in a cutting way, Nanny knew. But Granny Weatherwax could listen in a cutting way. She could make something sound stupid just by hearing it.”

“Mrs. Earwig (pronounced Ar-wige, at least by Mrs. Earwig) believed in shiny wands, and magical amulets and mystic runes and the power of the stars, while Granny Weatherwax in cups of tea, dry biscuits, washing every morning in cold water and, well...mostly she believed in Granny Weatherwax.”

“And Granny Weatherwax was pretty damn powerful. She was probably an even more accomplished witch than the infamous Black Aliss and everyone knew what happened to her at the finish.”

“Hah!" said Granny Weatherwax. "I should just say it is a folk song! I knows all about folk songs. Hah! You think you're listenin' to a nice song about...cuckoos and fiddlers and nightingales and whatnot, and then it turns out to be about...something else entirely," she added darkly.”

“...Granny Weatherwax, who had walked nightly without fear in the bandit-haunted forests of the mountains all her life in the certain knowledge that the darkness held nothing more terrible than she was...”