The houes stretched away to the left, hiding behind their own timber fences, but on the right it was nothing but fields bathing in the moonlight. Sinister grey shapes moved across the stubble, their eyes gleaming like jackals'. Sinister sheep. Sheeping sinisterly.

In the rear-view mirror he looked bigger than he was. Blond, snubbed nose. Prominent ears. A bit more overbite than was healthy in a grown man.

Two of them lurked in the ruined graveyard. Two shadowy figures, one hunched and squat, the other lean and menacing, both of them Olympic-grade lurkers. If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded "Born to Lurk," these two would have been on the album cover.

The only other people in the dining room were a family party, a mother and father with a small boy and girl, and they talked to one another softly and gently, and once the little girl turned and regarded Elanor with frank curiosity and, after a minute, smiled. The lights from the stream below touched the ceiling and the polished tables and glanced along the little girl's curls, and the little girl's mother said, "She wants her cup of stars."

Over the porcelain basin and beneath the water trickling from the tap I saw two hands.
That was all - two small hands, a child's hands. I cannot tell how they ended.

There were people who'd steal money from people. Fair enough. That was just theft. But there were people who, with one easy word, would steal the humanity from peple. That was something else.

"Everybody," said Frederica, "seems very proud of being very rude, these days."

Granny disapproved of magic for domestic purposes, but she was annoyed. She also wanted her tea.
She threw a couple of logs into the fireplace and glared at them until they burst into flame out of sheer embarrassment.

It was about as bare as a mountain could be.
Most of the trees gave out about halfway to the top, only a few pines hanging on to give an effect very similar to the couple of pathetic strands teased across his scalp by a baldie who won't own up.
It was a place where witches met.
Tonight a fire gleamed on the very crest of the hill. Dark figures moved in the flickering light.
The moon coasted across a lacework of clouds.
Finally, a tall, pointy-hatted figure said, "You mean everyone brought potato salad?"

-Do I have to talk to insane people?
-You're a librarian now. I'm afraid it's mandatory.

I saw something nasty in the woodshed!

A snood full of coarse porridge hung over the fire, and standing with one arm resting upon the high mantel, looking moodily down into the heaving contents of the snood, was a tall young man whose riding-boots were splashed with mud to the thigh, and whose coarse linen shirt was open to his waist. The firelight lit up his diaphragm muscles as they heaved slowly in rough rythm with the porridge.

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

Mrs Next came back into the room.
"You never told me you'd bought a gold-plated toilet."
Landen frowned.
"We don't have a gold-plated toilet."
"Oh dear," said Mrs Next, "I think I've just peed in your tuba."

Hvilken farge får en smurf når du kveler den?
-Steven Wright

The real-life monsters weren't grotesques: they were quiet men and women, people you passed on the street and didn't notice. Rebus was glad he couldn't read people's minds. It would be pure hell.

"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?"

"If you can't learn to ride an elephant, you can at least learn to ride a horse"
"What's an elephant?"
"A kind of badger", said Granny. She hadn't maintained forest-credibility for forty years by ever admitting ignorance.

"Rincewind, all the shops have been smashed open. There was a whole bunch of people across the street helping themselves to musical instruments, can you believe that?"

"Yeah", said Rincewind, picking up a knife and testing its blade thoughtfully. "Luters, I expect."

"She walks into the room as silently as a sunbeam", Mr Dobbin thought, as he saw her passing in and out from her father's room, a cheerful sweetness lighting up her face as she moved to and fro, graceful and noiseless.