* Which presumably mean that some are virulent and deadly, and others just make you walk in a funny way and avoid fruit.

* Sometimes, of course, to say, “please stop doing it.”

* It struck people as odd that, while Lancre people refused pointblank to have any truck with democracy, on the basis that governing was what the king ought to do and they’d be sure to tell him if he went wrong, they didn’t make very good servants. Oh, they could cook and dig and wash and footle and buttle and did it very well but could never quite get the hang of the serving mentality. King Verence was quite understanding about this, and put up with Shawn ushering guests into the dining room with a cry of “Lovely grub, get it while it’s hot!”

*Apart from the ones containing small postal orders attached to letters which, generally, said pretty much the same thing: Dear Mum and Dad, I am doing pretty well in Ankh-Morpork and this week I earned a whole seven dollars…

* When there was nothing much else to occupy her time Granny Weatherwax sent her mind Borrowing, letting it piggyback inside the heads of other creatures. She was widely accepted as the most skilled exponent of the art that the Ramtops had seen for centuries, being practically able to get inside the minds of things that didn’t even have minds. The practice meant, among other things, that Lancre people were less inclined toward the casual cruelty to animals that is a general feature of the rural idyll, on the basis that the rat you throw a brick at today might turn out to be the witch you need some toothache medicine from tomorrow.
It also meant that people calling on her unexpectedly would find her stretched out apparently cold and lifeless, heart and pulse barely beating. The sign had saved a lot of embarrassment.

* It was obvious to King Verence that even if every adult were put under arms the kingdom of Lancre would still have a very small and insignificant army, and he’d therefore looked for other ways to put it on the military map. Shawn had come up with the idea of the Lancrastrian Army Knife, containing a few essential tools and utensils for the soldier in the field, and research and development work had been going on for some months now. One reason for the slow progress was that the king himself was taking an active interest in the country’s only defense project, and Shawn was receiving little notes up to three times every day with further suggestions for improvement. Generally they were on the lines of: “A device, possibly quite small, for finding things that are lost,” or “A curiously shaped hook-like thing of many uses.” Shawn diplomatically added some of them but lost as many notes as he dared, lest he design the only pocket knife on wheels.

* The leitmotif of the Guild of Barber-Surgeons

* On the rare maps on the Ramtops that existed, it was spelled Überwald. But Lancre people had never got the hang of accents and certainly didn’t agree with trying to balance two dots on another letter, where they’d only roll off and cause unnecessary punctuation.

* Lancre people considered that anything religious that wasn’t said in some ancient and incomprehensible speech probably wasn’t the genuine article.

* This was because Lancre people had a fresh if somewhat sideways approach to names, generally just picking a sound they liked. Sometimes there was a logic to it, but only by accident. There’d be a Chlamydia Weaver toddling around today if her mother hadn’t suddenly decided that Sally was easier to spell.

* King Verence was very keen that someone should compose a national anthem for Lancre, possibly referring to its very nice trees, and had offered a small reward. Nanny Ogg reasoned that it would be easy money because national anthems only ever have one verse or, rather, all have the same second verse, which goes “nur…hnur…mur…nur nur, hnur…nur…nur, hnur” at some length until everyone remembers the last line of the first verse and sings it as loudly as they can.

* In a society that had progressed beyond the privy and the earth closet she would have said “pulling my chain.”

* The role of the lower intestine in the efforts to built a better nation is one that is often neglected by historians.

* Igor had two thumbs on his right hand. If something was useful, he always said, you may as well add another.