Wyrd Quotes

If they wanted Adarlan's Assassin, they'd get her. And Wyrd help them when she arrived.

This book was written using 100% recycled words.

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.

The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.

Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.

She walked quickly through the darkness with the frank stride of someone who was at least certain that the forest, on this damp and windy night, contained strange and terrible things and she was it.

Destiny is all, Ravn liked to tell me, destiny is everything. He would even say it in English, “Wyrd biõ ful ãræd.

I hate cats." Death's face became a little stiffer, if that were possible. The blue glow in his eye sockets flickered red for an instant. "I SEE," he said. The tone suggested that death was too good for cat haters.

Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things.

It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone’s mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.

Wyrd bið ful āræd. Fate is inexorable.

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.

Everywhere's been where it is ever since it was first put there. It's called geography.

Granny Weatherwax was often angry. She considered it one of her strong points. Genuine anger was one of the world's greatest creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn't mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.

Trouble is, just because things are obvious doesn't mean they're true.

I reckon responsible behavior is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins.

Destiny is important, see, but people go wrong when they think it controls them. It's the other way around.

Someone smashed a flutterfler and without even thinking she touched her Stone and used Wyrd to piece its broken body back together. She filled its empty vessels with dreams and it became the stuff it used for blood. It brushed her cheek with its wings, then flew off -- dancing in the hot air.

Dorian could only stare at her. This was different from the feral creature she'd become the night Nehemia had died. What she was right now, the edge on which she was balancing... Wyrd help them all. But than Chaol was at her chair, grasping her elbow. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Celaena looked up at him and smiled sweetly. "Your job, apparently." She shook off his grip with a thrash, then got up from her seat, stalking around the table.

Ninety percent of true love is acute, ear-burning embarrassment.

Just call in at the torturer on your way out. See when he can fit you in.

Witches aren’t like that. We live in harmony with the great cycles of Nature, and do no harm to anyone, and it’s wicked of them to say we don’t. We ought to fill their bones with hot lead.

Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflected the landscape. And yet ... and yet ... Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things you might think they would want to escape from — hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in. He was fascinated.

This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That’s why everything is exactly the wrong way around.

Yes, she would go—to Rifthold, to anywhere, even through the Gates of the Wyrd and into Hell itself, if it meant freedom. After all, you aren’t Adarlan’s Assassin for nothing.

She'd never mastered the talent for apologizing, but she appreciated it in other people.

Sunset's Passions," he read, and opened the book to a random page to read aloud. "'His hands gently caressed her ivory, silky br- " His eyes widened. "By the Wyrd! Do you actually read this rubbish? What happened to Symbols of Power and Eyllwe Customs and Culture?" ... "You may borrow it when I'm done. If you read it, your literary experience will be complete. And," she added with a coy smile, "it will give you some creative ideas of things to do with your lady friends.

But I think you have a right to know what it is you’re not being told.

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.

Don't you want to die nobly for a just cause?" "I'd much rather live quietly for one.

Wyrd biõ ful ãræd,” I said. Fate is fate. It cannot be changed or cheated.

Granny’s implicit belief that everything should get out of her way extended to other witches, very tall trees and, on occasion, mountains.

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.

If I'd had to buy you, you wouldn't be worth the price.

Come hither, Fool." The Fool jingled miserably across the floor.

Wyrd bið ful aræd

The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.

The theater troubled her. It had a magic of its own, one that didn’t belong to her, one that wasn’t in her control. It changed the world, and said things were otherwise than they were. And it was worse than that. It was magic that didn’t belong to magical people. It was commanded by ordinary people, who didn’t know the rules. They altered the world because it sounded better.

The night was as black as the inside of a cat.

There were only three times in your life when it was proper to come through the front door, and you were carried every time.

Wyrd bið ful āræd. Fate is inexorable. We are given power and we lose it.

Somewhere deep inside his mind, somewhere beyond the event horizon of rationality, the sheer pressure of insanity had hammered his madness into something harder than diamond.

Wyrd, we called her in that old world.

We ain’t going to curse anyone,” said Granny firmly. “It hardly ever works if they don’t know you’ve done it.

Othalas: Words. What are they but shadows on a page or howling on the wind? They are as ever-changing as the mists below us and it is just as easy to lose sense of yourself among them. I am older than most sorcerers so what I know may, indeed, be close to the truth. Magic, wyrd, words, dreams, they all come from the spirit. Within them lie both power and peril. For to misuse any is to warp your sense of self. To lie in words, or in magic, or in dreams -- that is how you become lost. The lights you see, they were lost long before they came to the Vale.

Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things. Well-known fact,” said Granny. “But I don’t hold with encouraging it.

The storm was really giving it everything it had. This was its big chance. It had spent years hanging around the provinces, putting in some useful work as a squall, building up experience, making contacts, occasionally leaping out on unsuspecting shepherds or blasting quite small oak trees. Now an opening in the weather had given it an opportunity to strut its hour, and it was building up its role in the hope of being spotted by one of the big climates.

My name is unpronounceable in your tongue, woman,” it said. “I’ll be the judge of that,” warned Granny, and added, “Don’t call me woman.” “Very well. My name is WxrtHltl-jwlpklz,” said the demon smugly.

Let him be whoever he thinks he is,” she said. “That’s all anybody could hope for in this world.

Man just went past with a cat on his head,

Wyrd oft nered unfaegne, eorl, ponne his ellen deah. Often, for undaunted courage, fate spares the man it has not already marked.

We got the spell exactly right. Except for the ingredients. And most of the poetry. And it probably wasn’t the right time. And Gytha took most of it home for the cat, which couldn’t of been proper.

You're wondering whether I really would cut your throat," panted Magrat. "I don't know either. Think of the fun we could have together, finding out

... being assassinated is natural causes for a king.

Things like crowns had a troublesome effect on clever folk; it was best to leave all the reigning to the kind of people whose eyebrows met in the middle when they tried to think. In a funny sort of way, they were much better at it.

Absolute confidence, absolute arrogance: her best shields and most beloved masks. “I hope His Majesty has a decent spread of food for me to eat while I’m being interrogated.” “Watch your mouth or the only thing you’ll be eating is hot coals.” “Do you actually make people do that?” His eyes narrowed. “What kind of person do you take me for?” “You are the Captain of the Guard of the most powerful man in the world. Wyrd knows what horrible things you’ve done to people.” “You must be nervous as hell if you’re resorting to taunting me.

Several sellers of hot meat pies and sausages in a bun had appeared from nowhere and were doing a brisk trade. [Footnote: They always do, everywhere. No-one sees them arrive. The logical explaination is that the franchise includes the stall, the paper hat and a small gas-powered time machine.]

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.

It was destined to be the most impressive kiss in the history of foreplay. The kiss lasted more than fifteen years. Not even frogs can manage that.

But deep under the earth, where the corpse serpent gnaws at the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree of life, there are three spinners. Three women who make our fate. We might believe we make choices, but in truth our lives are in the spinners' fingers. They make our lives, and destiny is everything. The Danes know that, and even the Christians know it, Wyrd biõ ful araed, we Saxons say, fate is inexorable.

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

If anyone locked me in a dungeon, there'd be screams.

He growled and stood up. “There is a knocking without,” he said. “Without what?” said the Fool. “Without the door, idiot.” The Fool gave him a worried look. “A knocking without a door?” he said suspiciously. “This isn’t some kind of Zen, is it?

Granny turned slowly in her seat to look at the audience. They were staring at the performance, their faces rapt. The words washed over them in the breathless air. This was real. This was more real even than reality. This was history. It might not be true, but that had nothing to do with it. Granny had never had much time for words. They were so insubstantial. Now she wished that she had found the time. Words were indeed insubstantial. They were as soft as water, but they were also as powerful as water and now they were rushing over the audience, eroding the levees of veracity, and carrying away the past.

Besides, killing a ring dragon is a very personal thing. You would have to wield me yourself. An act like that affects your wyrd.” I frowned. “You mean it affects you weirdly?” “No. Your wyrd.” “You’re weird,” I muttered. “He means fate,” Blitzen put in, signing as he spoke for Hearth’s benefit.

Particles of raw inspiration sleet through the universe all the time. Every once in a while one of them hits a receptive mind, which then invents DNA or the flute sonata form or a way of making light bulbs wear out in half the time. But most of them miss. Most people go through their lives without being hit by even one.

Dorian looked down at the book. "This isn't one of the books that I sent you! I don't even own books like these!" She laughed weakly and took the tea from the servant as she approached. "Of course you don't, Dorian. I had the maids send for a copy today." "Sunset's Passions," he read, and opened the book to a random page to read aloud. "'His hands gently caressed her ivory, silky br-'" His eyes widened. "By the Wyrd! Do you actually read this rubbish? What happened to Symbols and Power and Eyllwe Customs and Culture?" She finished her drink, the ginger tea easing her stomach. "You may borrow it when I'm done. If you read it, you literary experience will be complete. And," she added with a coy smile, "it will give you some creative ideas of things to do with your lady friends." He hissed through his teeth. "I will not read this." She took the book from his hands, leaning back. "Then I suppose you're just like Chaol." "Chaol?" he asked, falling into the trap. "You asked Chaol to read this?" "He refused, of course," she lied. "He said it wasn't right for him to read this sort of material if I gave it to him." Dorian snatched the book from her hands. "Give me that, you demon-woman. I'll not have you matching us against each other." He glanced once more at the novel, then turned it over, concealing the title. She smiled, and resumed watching the falling snow.

Thoughts are like raindrops,’ he persisted, introducing yet another of his interminable images. ‘They fall, make a splash and then dry up. But the world of wyrd is like the mighty oceans from which raindrops arise and to which they return in rivers and streams.

Very well. My name is WxrtHltl-jwlpklz,” said the demon smugly. “Where were you when the vowels were handed out? Behind the door?” said Nanny Ogg.

We—we spread out,” he said. “Yes. We spread out. That’s what we do.” They moved carefully through the bracken. The sergeant crouched behind a handy log, and said, “Right. Very good. You’ve got the general idea. Now let’s spread out again, and this time we spread out separately.

Someone has to do it. It's all very well calling for eye of newt, but do you mean Common, Spotted or Great Crested? Which eye, anyway? Will tapioca do just as well? If we substitute egg white will the spell a) work b) fail or c) melt the bottom out of the cauldron? Goodie Whemper's curiosity about such things was huge and insatiable*. * Nearly insatiable. It was probably satiated in her last flight to test whether a broomstick could survive having its bristles pulled out one by one in mid-air. According to the small black raven she had trained as a flight recorder, the answer was almost certainly no.

They say this fruit be like unto the world / So sweet. Or like, say I, the heart of man / So red without and yet within, unclue’d / We find the worm, the rot, the flaw. / However glows his bloom the bite / Proves many a man be rotten at the core.

On nights such as this, evil deeds are done. And good deeds, of course. But mostly evil, on the whole.   On nights such as this, witches are abroad. Well, not actually abroad. They don’t like the food and you can’t trust the water and the shamans always hog the deckchairs.

Actors had a habit of filling all the space around them.

In fact no gods anywhere play chess. They haven’t got the imagination. Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god’s idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.

Genuine anger was one of the world’s great creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn’t mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.

Destiny was funny stuff, he knew. You couldn’t trust it. Often you couldn’t even see it. Just when you knew you had it cornered, it turned out to be something else—coincidence, maybe, or providence. You barred the door against it, and it was standing behind you. Then just when you thought you had it nailed down it walked away with the hammer.

It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone's mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.

And, with alarming suddenness, nothing happened.

In the end, bless the darkness, hold the light, because the two aren't divisible.

Drunkenness had this to be said for it, it stopped the flow of inspirations.

A year went past. The days followed one another patiently. Right back at the beginning of the multiverse they had all tried passing at the same time, and it hadn't worked.

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?

The road, Hwel felt, had to go somewhere. This geographical fiction has been the death of many people. Roads don’t necessarily have to go anywhere, they just have to have somewhere to start.

...there was possibly something complimentary in the way Granny Weatherwax resolutely refused to consider other people's problems. It implied that, in her considerable opinion, they were quite capable of sorting them out by themselves.

By the Valg, three were made, Of the Gate-Stone of the Wyrd: Obsidian the gods forbade And stone they greatly feared. In grief, he hid one in the crown Of her he loved so well, To keep with her where she lay down Inside the starry cell. The second one was hidden In a mountain made of fire, Where all men were forbidden Despite their great desires. Where the third lies Will never be told By voice or tongue Or sum of gold.

... the thing with crowns is, it isn't the putting them on that's the problem, it's the taking them off.

Right,' he said uncertainty. His mind was grinding through the problem. She was a witch. Just lately there'd been a lot of gossip about witches being bad for your health. He'd been told not to let witches pass, but no one had said anything about apple sellers. Apple sellers were not a problem. It was witches that were the problem. She'd said she was an apple seller and he wasn't about to doubt a witch's word.

Death’s face became a little stiffer, if that were possible. The blue glow in his eye sockets flickered red for an instant. I SEE, he said. The tone suggested that death was too good for cat-haters. YOU LIKE GREAT BIG DOGS, I IMAGINE.

They live their lives as a sort of temporal blur around the point where their body actually is – anticipating the future, or holding on to the past. They’re usually so busy thinking about what happens next that the only time they ever find out what is happening now is when they come to look back on it.

Insomniacs should not be forced to exist in a realm with reflective glass. From the first look I’m boxed in a prism, rainbows charming the other dark-circled self into sharing my prison. One eye turns on the other, each accusing the other of being responsible for an appearance oddly elfin, before exiting head and bouncing like lottery balls through the mirror walls and then drifting up and out the open and unguarded Well of the Wyrd. There, everyone with mirrors and mushrooms is waiting for me, faded and dissolved into giggles.

Particles of raw inspiration sleet through the universe all the time. Every once in a while one of them hits a receptive mind, which then invents DNA or the flute sonata form or a way of making light bulbs wear out in half the time.

It had, however, been declared by his own physician to be a case of natural causes. Bentzen had gone to see the man and explained that falling down a flight of steps with a dagger in your back was a disease caused by an unwise opening of the mouth.

She did nothing, although sometimes when she saw him in the village she'd smile in a faint, puzzled way. After three weeks of this the suspense was too much for him and he took his own life; in fact he took it all the way across the continent, where he became a reformed character and never went home again.

There are very few things that live in both this world and the world of dreams. Most are gods, angels and demons. The Stone you hold was made by Vlad Valkire the son of an angel and a demon. By the divine blood that ran in his veins, Valkire could see the light and hear the song of creation -- if only as glimmerings and whispers. "Over time, he became aware of the light and the music and as he grew so did his understanding of it. At the age of twenty two, he began his greatest labor -- the making of the Wyrd Stones. In them he captured the light and song of creation and by them some of the powers of gods, angels and demons fell into the hands of elves and men. A sorcerer who knows its secret may -- like a god, angel, or demon -- stand with one foot in this world and another within the world of dreams. "Your Stone is a gateway into the world of dreams, Luthiel. When you sing, it opens and you are, in part, taken there. Others who hold a Wyrd Stone like yours may know when someone crosses into dream. When you sang, I could hear you quite clearly.

Particles of raw inspiration sleet through the universe all the time. Every once in a while one of them hits a receptive mind, which then invents DNA or the flute sonata form or a way of making light bulbs wear out in half the time. But most of them miss. Most people go through their lives without being hit by even one. Some people are even more unfortunate. They get them all.

Nanny Ogg was sitting in a chair by the fire with a quart mug in one hand, and was conducting the reprise with a cigar. She grinned when she saw Granny’s face. “What ho, my old boiler,” she screeched above the din. “See you turned up, then. Have a drink. Have two. Wotcher, Magrat. Pull up a chair and call the cat a bastard.

...what about this rule about not meddling?’ said Magrat. ‘Ah,’ said Nanny. She took the girl’s arm. ‘The thing is,’ she explained, ‘as you progress in the Craft, you’ll learn there is another rule. Esme’s obeyed it all her life.’ ‘And what’s that?’ ‘When you break rules, break ‘em good and hard…

Witches just aren’t like that,” said Magrat. “We live in harmony with the great cycles of Nature, and do no harm to anyone, and it’s wicked of them to say we don’t. We ought to fill their bones with hot lead." The other two looked at her with a certain amount of surprised admiration. She blushed, although not greenly, and looked at her knees. “Goodie Whemper did a recipe,” she confessed. “It’s quite easy. What you do is, you get some lead, and you—” “I don’t think that would be appropriate,” said Granny carefully, after a certain amount of internal struggle. “It could give people the wrong idea.” “But not for long,” said Nanny wistfully.

I am a harmless old seller of apples," she said, in a voice more appropriate for the opening of hostilities in a middle-range war. "Pray let me past, dearie." The last word had knives in it. "No-one must enter the castle," said one of the guards. "Orders of the duke." Granny shrugged. The apple-seller gambit had never worked more than once in the entire history of witchcraft, as far as she knew, but it was traditional. "I know you, Champett Poldy," she said. "I recall I laid out your grandad and I brought you into the world." She glanced at the crowds, which had regathered a little way off, and turned back to the guard, whose face was already a mask of terror. She leaned a little closer, and said, "I gave you your first good hiding in this valley of tears and by all the gods if you cross me now I will give you your last." There was a soft metallic noise as the spear fell out of the man's fearful fingers. Granny reached and gave the trembling man a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "But don't worry about it," she added. "Have an apple.