“When it came down to it and the life-or-death decision had to be made, then it was made by you, because you were the witch. And sometimes it wasn't a decision between a good thing or a bad thing, but a decision between to bad things: no right choices, just... choices.”

“It was amazing how many friends you could make by being bad at things, provided you were bad enough to be funny.”

“A witch who is bored might do ANYTHING.People said things like 'we had to make our own amusements in those days' as if this signified some kind of moral worth, and perhaps it did, but the last thing you wanted a witch to do was get bored and start making her own amusements, because witches sometimes had famously erratic ideas about what was amusing.”

“That’s what being alive is, Thing! It’s being badly prepared for everything! Because you only get one chance, Thing!”

“It was much better to imagine men in some smokey room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told the children bed time stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, then what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.”

“And what do you really do?" asked Tiffany. The thin witch hesitated for a moment, and then: "We look to ... the edges," said Mistress Weatherwax. "There's a lot of edges, more than people know. Between life and death, this world and the next, night and day, right and wrong ... an' they need watchin'. We watch 'em, we guard the sum of things. And we never ask for any reward. That's important.”

“They didn't know why these things were funny. Sometimes you laugh because you've got no more room for crying. Sometimes you laugh because table manners on a beach are funny. And sometimes you laugh because you're alive, when you really shouldn't be.”