Цитаты из книги Hogfather

“That’s like saying that jam attracts wasps, you see.”

Death had picked up…humanity. Not the real thing, but something that might pass for it until you examined it closely.

MEMO: DON’T FORGET THE SOOTY FOOTPRINTS. MORE
PRACTICE ON THE HO HO HO.
CUSHION.

Several pages of parchment had been filled up with Death’s own handwriting. It was immediately recognizable. No one else Susan had ever met had handwriting with serifs.

Susan had never been able to see the attraction in cats. They were owned by the kind of people who liked puddings.

There had been changes. One significant change, at least.
There was a cat-flap in the door.
She stared at it.

The snow had done what even wizards and the Watch couldn’t do, which was clean up Ankh-Morpork. It hadn’t had time to get dirty. In the morning it’d probably look as though the city had been covered in coffee meringue, but for now it mounded the bushes and trees in pure white.
There was no noise. The curtains of snow shut out the city lights. A few yards into the park and she might as well be in the country.

Humans could exist here, though.
It was never too cold, although the air did prickle like winter air on a sunny day. But out of human habit Susan got her cloak out of the closet.

Susan stood by the fireplace.
<…>Death considered as an individual rather than life’s final curtain was someone she couldn’t help liking, in a strange kind of way.
Even so…

The pigs galloped on.

“Nighty-night,” said Albert.
<…>
And they were gone.

SHE SAYS SHE IS FIVE YEARS OLD.
“In years, yes. In cynicism, she’s about thirty-five.

Death leaned down. She stared up into the blue glow of his eyes.
YOU ARE KEEPING WELL? he said.
“Yes.”
SELF-RELIANT? MAKING YOUR OWN WAY IN THE WORLD?
“Yes!”

A couple of days earlier she’d taken the children to the Hogfather’s Grotto in one of the big shops in The Maul.
<…>
There had been people dressed up as pixies, and a picket outside the shop by the Campaign for Equal Heights.
The CEH was always ready to fight for the rights of the differently tall,

But it was always the case, wasn’t it?

There was far more to genetics than little squirmy spirals.
She could walk through walls when she really had to. She could use a tone of voice that was more like actions than words, that somehow reached inside people and operated all the right switches. And her hair…
That had only happened recently, though. It used to be unmanageable, but at around the age of seventeen she had found it more or less managed itself.

She hadn’t known then that her father had been Death’s apprentice for a while, and that her mother was Death’s adopted daughter.

THE HOGFATHER IS…UNAVAILABLE.
“Unavailable? At Hogswatch?”
YES.

Death looked nervous.
ALBERT SAID IT WOULD HELP ME GET INTO THE SPIRIT OF THE THING. ER…IT’S GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN—

“I mean it’s a time when humans are really human,” she said. “And they don’t want a…a skeleton at the feast! Especially one, I might add, who’s wearing a false beard and has got a damn cushion shoved up his robe! I mean, why?”