Have some Granny Weatherwax wit and wisdom and Bad Ass-ery. It's amazing how fully-formed her character was right from (practically) the very beginning of Discworld, in Equal Rites.
"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.
-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
"That's one form of magic, of course."
"What, just knowing things?"
"Knowing things that other people don't know," said Granny.
-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
"You're a bit young for this," she said, "but as you grow older you'll find most people don't set foot outside their own heads much. You too," she added gnomically.
-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
"That's the biggest part of doct'rin, really. Most people'll get over most things if they put their minds to it, you just have to give them an interest."
-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
She had got "diuerse" out of the Almanack, which she read every night. It was always predicting "diuerse plagues" and "diuerse ill-fortune." Granny wasn't entirely sure what it meant, but it was a damn good word all the same.
-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
But Granny had spent a lifetime bending recalcitrant creatures to her bidding and, while Esk was a surprisingly strong opponent, it was obvious that she would give in before the end of the paragraph.
-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
Granny, meanwhile, was two streets away. She was also, by the standards of normal people, lost. She would not see it like that. She knew where she was, it was just that everywhere else didn't.
-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
"Yes," lied Granny, whose grasp of geography was slightly worse than her knowledge of subatomic physics.
-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
"No, I could tell he was telling the truth. You know, Granny, you can tell how--"
"Foolish child. All you could tell was that he thought he was telling the truth. The world isn't always as people see it."
-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
"Um, women aren't allowed in," said Esk.
Granny stopped in the doorway. Her shoulders rose. She turned around very slowly. "What did you say?" she said. "Did these old ears deceive me, and don't say they did because they didn't."
"Sorry," said Esk. "Force of habit."
"I can see you've been getting ideas below your station," said Granny coldly.
-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
Granny smiled grimly. It was the sort of smile that wolves ran away from.
-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
"Anyway, you walk wrong for rain."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You go all hunched up, you fight it, that's not the way. You should--well, move between the drops." And, indeed, Granny seemed to be merely damp.
-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
Granny adjusted her hat and straighted up purposefully.
"Right," she said.
Cutangle swayed. The tone of voice cut through him like a diamond saw. He could dimly remember being scolded by his mother when he was small; well, this was that voice, only refined and concentrated and edged with little bits of carborundum, a tone of command that would have a corpse standing to attention and could probably have marched it halfway across its cemetery before it remembered it was dead.
-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
"Yes, but is it safe?"
Granny gave him a withering look. "Do you mean in the absolute sense?" she asked. "Or, say, compared with staying behind on a melting ice floe?"
-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
"Right," she said, in a tone of voice that suggested the whole universe had just better watch out.
-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
"I know. The building told me."
"Yes, I was meaning to ask about that," said Cutangle, "because you see it's never said anything to me and I've lived here for years."
"Have you ever listened to it?"
"Not exactly listened, no," Cutangle conceded. "Not as such."
-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
