Terry David John Pratchett

She was actually quite surprised she’d promised that, since she hadn’t intended to, it strictly speaking being her afternoon free until the coach came, but Miss Tick had a way of asking questions that got the answers she wanted.

Miss Tick also asked for a fresh egg, not cooked, in its shell. Witches were also good at asking questions that weren’t followed by the other person saying, “Why?”

She was actually quite surprised she’d promised that, since she hadn’t intended to, it strictly speaking being her afternoon free until the coach came, but Miss Tick had a way of asking questions that got the answers she wanted.

Miss Tick also asked for a fresh egg, not cooked, in its shell. Witches were also good at asking questions that weren’t followed by the other person saying, “Why?”

Miss Tick?” said Tiffany again as they trudged away.

“Er, yes?”

“You are very nervous,” said Tiffany. “If you told me why, that means there’s two of us, which is only half the nervousness each.”

“Well, the thing about the obvious,” said Miss Level, “is that it so often isn’t. . . .

Things that try too hard to be funny often aren’t.

folded gently into the gutter

sizzled in the damp

Crowley had dark hair and good cheekbones and he was wearing snakeskin shoes, or at least presumably he was wearing shoes, and he could do really weird things with his tongue. And, whenever he forgot himself, he had a tendency to hiss.

He also didn't blink much.

The reason he was late was that he was enjoying the twentieth century immensely. It was much better than the seventeenth, and a lot better than the fourteenth. One of the nice things about Time, Crowley always said, was that it was steadily taking him further away from the fourteenth century, the most bloody boring hundred years on God's, excuse his French, Earth. The twentieth century was anything but boring. In fact, a flashing blue light in his rearview mirror had been telling Crowley, for the last fifty seconds, that he was being followed by two men who would like to make it even more interesting for him.

Spending years picking away at one soul. Admittedly it was craftsmanship, but you had to think differently these days. Not big, but wide. With five billion people in the world you couldn't pick the buggers off one by one any more; you had to spread your effort.