English Novels

"She was wearing a red, off-the-shoulder evening dress, an impressively large wig, and quite a lot of jewelry. “Yes, it costs a lot of money to look as cheap as this, Sergeant,“ she said, catching his expression. (p. 208)"

"It was just waiting for some idiot to do the wrong thing, and Nature is bountiful where idiots are concerned. (p. 233)"

"But here's some advice, boy. Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That’s why they’re called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes. (p. 234)"

"“I mean, doesn’t it change history even if you just tread on an ant?” “For the ant, certainly,” said Qu. (p. 240)"

"And it was indeed the Hon. Ronald Rust, the gods’ gift to the enemy, any enemy, and a walking encouragement to desertion. The Rust family had produced great soldiers, by the undemanding standards of “Deduct Your Own Casualties From Those Of The Enemy, And If The Answer Is A Positive Sum, It Was A Glorious Victory" school of applied warfare. But Rust’s lack of any kind of military grasp was matched only by his high opinion of the talent he, in fact, possessed only in negative amounts. (p. 243)"

"Rust was a fool. But at the moment he was a young fool, which is more easily excused. Maybe it was just possible, if caught early enough, that he could be upgraded to idiot. (p. 246)"

"Rust was always a man to interrupt an answer with a demand for the answer he was in fact interrupting. (p. 247)"

"Well, trouble is always easy to find when you have enough people looking for it. (p. 247)"

"One of the hardest lessons in young Sam’s life had been finding out that the people in charge weren’t in charge. It had been finding out that governments were not, on the whole, staffed by people who had a grip, and that plans were what people made instead of thinking. (p. 247)"

"There were plotters, there was no doubt about it. Some had been ordinary people who’d had enough. Some were young people with no money who objected to the fact that the world was run by old people who were rich. Some were in it to get girls. And some had been idiots as mad as Swing, with a view of the world just as rigid and unreal, who were on the side of what they called “The People.” Vimes had spent his life on the streets, and had met decent men, and fools, and people who’d steal a penny from a blind beggar, and people who performed silent miracles or desperate crimes every day behind the grubby windows of little houses, but he’d never met The People. (p. 249)"

"People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. (p. 250)"

"As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up. (p. 250)"

"Rust didn’t notice. He had a gift for not seeing things he did not want to see and not hearing things he did not want to hear. (p. 252)"

"Reg Shoe’s slightly worrying eyes remain fixed on Vimes’s face for a moment, and then his brain rejected the information as contrary to whatever total fantasy was going on inside. (p. 269)"

"He wanted to add: you’re a cell of one, Reg. The real revolutionaries are silent men with poker-player faces and probably don’t know or care if you exist. You’ve got the shirt and the haircut and the sash and you know all the songs, but you’re no urban guerrilla. You’re an urban dreamer. You turn over rubbish bins and scrawl on walls in the name of The People, who’d clip you round the ear if they found you doing it. But you believe. (p. 269)"

"As Vimes stepped out into the evening, a plaintive voice said: “You cannot fight for ‘reasonably priced love.’” “You can if you want me and the rest of the girls on board,“ said Rosie. “‘Free’ is not a word we wish to see used in these circumstances.” (pp. 291-292)"

"Reg had a hunted look. He made a dive for safety. “Well, at least we can agree on Truth, Freedom, and Justice, yes?” There was a chorus. Everyone wanted those. They didn’t cost anything. (p. 293)"

"“You'd like Freedom, Truth, and Justice, wouldn’t you, Comrade Sergeant?” said Reg encouragingly. “I’d like a hard-boiled egg,” said Vimes, shaking the match out. There was some nervous laughter, but Reg looked offended. “In the circumstances, Sergeant, I think we should set our sights a little higher—” “Well, yes, we could,” said Vimes, coming down the steps. He glanced at the sheets of papers in front of Reg. The man cared. He really did. And he was serious. He really was. “But...well, Reg, tomorrow the sun will come up again, and I’m pretty sure that whatever happens we won’t have found Freedom, and there won’t be a whole lot of Justice, and I’m damn sure we won't have found Truth. But it’s just possible that I might get a hard-boiled egg.” (p. 294)"

"“What’s this all about, Reg?” “The People’s Republic of Treacle Mine Road!” said Reg proudly. “We are forming a government!” “Oh, good,“ said Vimes. “Another one. Just what we need. Now, does any one of you know where my damn barricades have gone?” (p. 294)"

"When he was a boy, he’d read books about great military campaigns, and visited the museums and had looked with patriotic pride at the paintings of famous cavalry charges, last stands, and glorious victories. It had come as rather a shock, when he later began to participate in some of these, to find that the painters had unaccountably left out the intestines. Perhaps they just weren’t very good at them. (pp. 295-296)"

"And it actually kind of logic, if you didn’t factor in considerations like “real life” and “common sense.” (p. 305)"

"Changing history is like damming a river. It’ll find its way around. (p. 306)"

"“That’s a nice song,” said young Sam, and Vimes remembered that he was hearing it for the first time. “It’s an old soldiers’ song,” he said. “Really, Sarge? But it’s about angels.” Yes, thought Vimes, and it’s amazing what bits those angels cause to rise up as the song progresses. It’s a real soldiers’ song: sentimental, with dirty bits. “As I recall, they used to sing it after battles,” he said. I’ve seen old men cry when they sing it,” he added. “Why? It sounds cheerful.” They were remembering who they were not singing it with, thought Vimes. You’ll learn. I know you will. (p. 311)"

"“Is it going to come down to fighting, Sarge?” “Yes,” said Vimes without an opening his eyes. “Like, really fighting?” “Yep.” “But won’t there be some talking first?” “Nope,” said Vimes, trying to make himself comfortable. “Maybe some talking afterward.” “Seems the wrong way round!” “Yes, lad, but it’s a tried and tested method.” (pp. 315-316)"

"Trooper Gabitass had seen too many battlefields up close to use the word “glory” without wincing. (p. 318)"

"“And what do they talk about beyond the barricade, my little lad?” “Um…well, Justice an’ Truth an’ Freedom and stuff,” said Nobby. “Aha. Rebel talk!” said Carcer, straightening up. “Is it?” said the major. “Take it from me, Major,“ said Carcer. “When you get a bunch of people using words like that, they’re up to no good.” (pp. 320-321)"

"No one had tried very hard to establish the facts in any case. People said things like “Quite possibly we shall never know the truth” which meant, in Vimes’s personal lexicon, “I know, or think I know what the truth is, and hope like hell it doesn’t come out, because things are all smoothed over now.” (p. 329)"

"He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew…then it was too high. It wasn’t a decision he was making, he knew that. It happened far below the levels of the brain where decisions were made. It was something built in. There was no universe, anywhere, where a Sam Vimes would give in on this, because if he did then he wouldn’t be Sam Vimes anymore. (p. 330)"

"There was not a thing that he could do. He hadn’t bought a ticket and he hadn’t wanted to come, but now he was on the ride and couldn’t get off until the end. (p. 330)"

"People are content to wait a long time for salvation, but expect dinner to turn up within the hour. (p. 331)"

"“But I’ll tell you what,“ said Vimes. “If this goes on, the city will make sure the deliveries come in by other gates. We’ll be hungry then. That’s when we’ll need your organizational skills.“ “You mean we’ll be in a famine situation?” said Reg, the light of hope in his eyes. “If we aren’t, Reg, I’m sure you could organize one,” said Vimes, and realized he’d gone just a bit too far. (pp. 332-333)"

"It wasn’t a city, it was a process, a weight on the world that distorted the land for hundreds of miles around. People who’d never see it in their whole life nevertheless spent that life working for it. Thousands and thousands of green acres were part of it, forests were part of it. It drew in and consumed... …and gave back the dung from its pens, and the soot from its chimneys, and steel, and saucepans, and all the tools by which its food was made. And also clothes, and fashions, and ideas, and interesting vices, songs, and knowledge, and something which, if looked at in the right light, was called civilization. That’s what civilization meant. It meant the city. (p. 334)"

"For a moment, Vimes wondered, looking out through a gap in the furniture, if there wasn’t something in Fred’s idea about moving the barricades on and on, like a sort of sieve, street by street. You could let through the decent people, and push the bastards, the rich bullies, the wheelers and dealers in people’s fates, the leeches, the hangers-on, the brownnosers, and courtiers, and smarmy plump devils in expensive clothes, all those people who didn’t know or care about the machine but stole its grease, push them into a smaller and smaller compass and then leave them in there. Maybe you could toss some food in every couple of days, or maybe you could leave ’em to do what they’d always done, which was live off other people… (p. 335)"

"“Do you want to know what happened next, sir?” “Next? There was a next?” “Um…yes, sir. Quite a lot of next, actually, sir.” (p. 336)"

"Sorry, sir. But the city doesn’t stop, you see. It’s not like a battlefield. The best place for urban fighting is right out in the countryside, sir, where there’s nothing else in the way. (p. 337)"

"But those who filled in the grates and dusted the furniture and swept the floors stayed on, as they had stayed on before, because they seldom paid any attention to, or possibly didn’t even know, who their Lord was, and, in any case, were too useful and knew where the brooms were kept. Men come and go, but dust accumulates. And it was the morning of a new day, which looked, seen from below, quite like the old ones. (p. 355)"

"“Time has stopped for everyone but you,” said Sweeper patiently. “Actually, that sentence is wrong in every particular, but it’s quite a useful lie.” (p. 382)"

"Vimes was hazy on religion. He attended Watch funerals and went to such religious events as the proper fulfilling of the office of commander entailed, but has for the rest… well, you saw things sometimes that made it impossible to believe not only in gods, but also in common humanity and your own eyes. From what he could remember, Keel had felt the same way. You got on with things. If there was any gods, you expected them to get on with things, too, and didn’t interrupt them while they were working. (p. 384)"

"Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what you want to happen; witches tell you what’s going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough, witches tend to be more accurate but less popular."

"Tiffany sometimes feels she is nothing more than a way of moving boots around."

"They didn’t have to be funny—they were father jokes."

"Miss Tick did not look like a witch. Most witches don’t, at least the ones who wander from place to place. Looking like a witch can be dangerous when you walk among the uneducated. And for that reason she didn’t wear any occult jewelry, or have a glowing magical knife or a silver goblet with a pattern of skulls all around it, or carry a broomstick with sparks coming out of it, all of which are tiny hints that there may be a witch around. Her pockets never carried anything more magical than a few twigs, maybe a piece of string, a coin or two, and, of course, a lucky charm. Everyone in the country carried Lucky charms, and Miss Tick had worked out that if you didn’t have one, people would suspect you were a witch. You had to be a bit cunning to be a witch. Miss Tick did have a pointy hat, but it was a stealth hat and pointed only when she wanted it to."

"What they did was sell invisible things. And after they’d sold what they had, they still had it. They sold what everyone needed but often didn’t want. They sold the key to the universe to people who didn’t even know it was locked."

"Tiffany had seen a picture of Klatch in the Almanack. It showed a camel standing in a desert. She’d only found out what both those names were because her mother had told her. And that was Klatch, a camel in a desert. She’d wondered if there wasn’t a bit more to it, but it seemed that “Klatch = camel, desert“ was all anyone knew."

"“I’m a toad, actually,” said the creature, which had been peering at Tiffany from between the paper flowers. “You’re very yellow for a toad.” “I’ve been a bit ill,” said the toad. “And you talk,” said Tiffany. “You only have my word for it,” said the toad disappearing into the paper flowers. “You can’t prove anything.”"

"Her mother had read them to her when she was little, and then she’d read them to herself. And all the stories had, somewhere, the witch. The wicked old witch. And Tiffany had thought, Where’s the evidence? The stories never said why she was wicked. It was enough to be an old woman, enough to be all alone, enough to look strange because you have no teeth. It was enough to be called a witch. If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about “a handsome prince”...was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called him handsome? As for “a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long“...well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories didn’t want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told…"

"That was how it worked. No magic at all. But that time it had been magic. And it didn’t stop being magic just because you found out how it was done."

"“Tell me why you still want to be a witch, bearing in mind what happened to Mrs. Snapperly.” “So that sort of thing doesn’t happen again.” said Tiffany."

"“Well, I must go. I hope we shall meet again. I will give you some free advice, though.” “Will it cost me anything?” “What? I just said it was free!” said Miss Tick. “Yes, but my father said that free advice often turns out to be expensive,” said Tiffany. Miss Tick sniffed. “You could say this advice is priceless,” she said. “Are you listening?” “Yes,” said Tiffany. “Good. Now…if you trust in yourself…” “Yes?” “…and believe in your dreams…” “Yes?” “…and follow your star…” Miss Tick went on. “Yes?” “…you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy. Good-bye.”"

"Tiffany was on the whole quite a truthful person, but it seemed to her that there were times when things didn’t divide easily into “true” and “false,” but instead could be things that people needed to know at the moment and things that they didn’t need to know at the moment."