Terry Pratchett

"Of course, Lord Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, would occasionally meet Lady Margolotta, Governess of Uberwald," he wrote in the most recent Discworld book, "Raising Steam" (2013). "Why shouldn't he? After all he also occasionally had meetings with Diamond King of Trolls up near Koom Valley, and indeed with the Low King of the Dwarfs, Rhys Rhysson, in his caverns under Uberwald. This, as everybody knew, was politics. Yes, politics, the secret glue that stopped the world falling into warfare.
"In the past," he continued, "there had been so much war, far too much, but as every schoolboy knew, or at least knew in those days when schoolboys actually read anything more demanding than a crisp packet, not so long ago a truly terrible war, the last war of Koom Valley, had almost happened, out of which the dwarfs and trolls had managed to achieve not exactly peace, but an understanding from which, hopefully, peace might evolve. There had been the shaking of hands, important hands, shaken fervently, and so there was hope, hope as fragile as a thought."--New York Times, 3/13/2015

Terry Pratchett, April 18, 1948-March 12, 2015