"Now I know you saw something, sir," he said. "You were there." said Death. "You see, sir," said Corporal Carrot, "as I understand the law, you are an Accessory After the Fact. Or possibly Before the Fact."

"What do we do now, Nobby?" "Arrest the suspect, sarge," said Corporal Nobbs, saluting smartly. "What suspect, Nobby?" "Him," said Nobby, prodding the corpse with his boot. "I call it highly suspicious, being dead like that." "But he's the victim, Nobby. He was the one what was killed." "Ah, right. So we can get him as an accessory, too." "Nobby—" "He's been drinking, too. We could do him for being dead and disorderly."

"And at the end of time, living is about fightin’ against everything."

"Geoffrey looked at the captains’ warriors and sighed internally. Could they do it? They were old men. And then he thought, Yes, they are old men. They have been old men for a long time, which means they have learned many things. Like lying, and being crafty and, most importantly, dissembling."

"Some folk just don’t want to see the truth, even when you points it out to ’em."

"If’n people do wrong things, well, why would they be surprised if bad things then happen to them? Most of ’em knows this, you know."

"Tiffany sighed. “Being a witch is a man’s job: that’s why it needs women to do it.”"

"She had always liked the scullery. It smelled of hard work being done properly. Here there were also spiders, mostly hiding around the bottles and jars on the shelves, but she thought scullery spiders didn’t really count. Live and let live."

"Number two was Hugh, who had suggested to his father that he would like to go into the church. His father had said, “Only if it’s the Church of Om, but none of the others. I’m not having no son of mine fooling around with cultic activities!” Om was handily silent, thereby enabling his priests to interpret his wishes how they chose. Amazingly, Om’s wishes rarely translated into instructions like “Feed the poor” or “Help the elderly” but more along the lines of “You need a splendid residence” or “Why not have seven courses for dinner?” So Lord Swivel felt that a clergyman in the family could in fact be useful."

"But the reward for lots of work seemed to be lots more. If you dug the biggest hole, they just gave you a bigger shovel…"

"As his Lordship head pointed out: “if you take enough precautions, you never need to take precautions.” (p. 358)"

"But sooner or later there comes a time when you have to take names and crack skulls. I’m sorry, it’s at the other end of the spectrum from the little chat and it’s what happens when reason no longer holds sway. (p. 343)"

"Moist couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. Idiots with a cause and it had been such a stupid cause to begin with. (p. 338)"

"Mr. Lipwig, are you talking about magic here? I am an engineer, I am. We don’t ’old wi’ magic. (p. 322)"

"But it didn’t do to get angry, at least not yet. Anger was a weapon to be honed and treasured and used only at the moment yielding most premium. (p. 313)"

"Sad to say, but I’ve come to the conclusion that if you keep turning the other cheek they’ll go on slapping you in the face. (p. 288)"

"That’s the trouble, you see. When you’ve had hatred on your tongue for such a long time, you don’t know how to spit it out. (p. 284)"

"A kind of ratchet formed in people’s minds: here is the new thing and here it is. And yesterday you never thought about it and after today you don’t know what you would do without it. That was what the technology was doing. It was your slave but, in a sense, it might be the other way round. (p. 281)"

"Moist gave up. Too much traveling on the railway could turn you into a philosopher, although, he conceded, not a very good one. (p. 280)"

"Moist was not going to be intimidated by a bunch of small people who were giving themselves airs. He was never one for protocol—it got in the way and often concealed nasty and dangerous things. (p. 247)"

"“We can’t just drop everything, sir!” “Mister Lipwig. Is there something in the word tyrant you do not understand?” (p. 201)"

"“I have to ask, sir...Why does it have to be done like this?” Vetinari smiled. “Can you keep a secret, Mister Lipwig?” “Oh, yes, sir. I’ve kept lots.” “Capital. And the point is, so can I. You do not need to know.” (p. 201)"

"It appears, Mister Lipwig, that you do not understand the nature of our relationship. I ask, very politely, for you to achieve something, bearing in mind that there are other ways I could ask, and it is your job to get things done. (p. 200)"

"In the trouble with madness was that the mad didn’t know they were mad. The grags came down heavily on those who did not conform and seemed not to realize that this was like stamping potatoes into the mud to stop them growing. (p. 195)"

"The terrible fact was that when dwarfs schism, they schism…every deviation from the norm was treated as an attack on all that was truly dwarfish. (p. 195)"

"A dwarf who had been silent during the conclave in the cavern was remembering the old Djelibeybi legend about the way to get an ass down from the minaret, and of course the answer was you first have to teach it not to be an ass. But in what world could that ever happen when you’re dealing with grags? (p. 194)"

"“Thank you Mr. Forefather. Pretty soon there’ll be a lot of journalists coming to see all this and I’m sorry about that, but they turn up like flies.” “That’s all right, sir. Good for business. Journalists drink twice as much as anyone else and for twice as long.” (p. 191)"

"Moist was, by inclination, a stranger to the concept of two in the morning, a time that happened to other people. (p. 187)"

"We are not difficult people, but the government drags its feet when it comes to cleaning out ze bandits, because, as you understand, bandits and governments ’ave so much in common that they might be interchangeable anywhere in the world…I see you smiling, Mr. Lipwig. Is something amusing? (p. 139)"

"The smile Mr. de Worde gave as he stepped from the platform on to the footplate cemented this moment onto the front page, assuming this journey was a success—although you had to be aware that it would also make the front page if the engine blew up. Journalism was, well, after all, journalism. (p. 113)"

"Dick just loved talking about Iron Girder and everything else to do with locomotion, but he was a straightforward man and the press of the Sto Plains could eat up for lunch straightforward man if he wasn’t careful. Moist, on the other hand, in the vicinity of the press, was as straightforward as a sackful of kaleidoscopes. (p. 110)"

"Uncertainty is always uncertain, but the difficulty with people who rely on systems is that they begin to believe that nearly everything is in some way a system and therefore, sooner or later, they become bureaucrats. (p. 102)"

"I know that monks have been carefully shepherding the world, but I rather think they don’t realize that the sheep sometimes have better ideas. (p. 102)"

"A cloying silence reigned along the ancient corridors and cloisters of Unseen University. There was silence in the Library; there was silence in the halls. There was so much silence you could hear it. (p. 4)"

"If you knew what it was that people really, really wanted, you very nearly controlled them."

"But cats are good at steering people. A miaow here, a purr there, a little gentle pressure with a claw…and Maurice had never had to think about it before. Cats didn’t have to think. They just had to know what they wanted. Humans had to do the thinking. That’s what they were for."

"The trouble with thinking was that, once you started, you went on doing it."

"A wrong question for Maurice was one that he didn’t want anyone to ask."

"What was the point of education, he thought, if people went out afterward and used it?"

"Something’s going on, and when something’s going on, that means someone is getting rich, and when someone’s getting rich, I don’t see why that shouldn’t be m— us."

"“It’s odd,” said Peaches, “but we didn’t know the shadows were there until we had the light.”"

"“Keith is not a promising name start,” said Malicia. “It doesn’t hint of mystery. It just hints of Keith. Are you sure it’s your real name?”"

"“You lied?” “I just told a story,” said Malicia calmly. “It was a good one, too. It was much more true than the truth would sound.”"

"“And our lady friend, she thinks life works like a fairy tale.” “Well, that’s harmless, isn’t it?” asked Keith. “Yeah, but in fairy tales, when someone dies...it’s just a word.”"

"Life’s bad enough as it is without having to worry about invisible things you can’t see!"

"She thought animals were just people who hadn’t been paying enough attention."

"“Does there have to be a clue?” said Keith. “Of course!” said Malicia, looking under a chair. “Look, cat, there’s two types of people in the world. There are those who have got the plot, and those who haven’t. “The world hasn’t got a plot,” said Maurice. “Things just...happen, one after another.” “Only if you think of it like that,” said Malicia, far too smugly in Maurice’s opinion. “There’s always a plot. You just have to know where to look.”"

"“If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else’s story.” ”And what if your story doesn’t work?” ”You keep changing it until you find one that does.”"

"Maurice says governments are very dangerous criminals and steal money from people."

"Maurice watched them argue again. Humans, eh? Think they’re lords of creation. Not like us cats. We know we are. Ever see a cat feed a human? Case proven."