"“D’you know much about art, Nobby?” “If necessary, Sarge.” “Oh, come on, Nobby!” “What? Tawneee says what she does is Art, Sarge. And she wears more clothes than a lot of the women on the walls around here, so why be sniffy about it?” “Yeah, but…” Fred Colon hesitated here. He knew in his heart that spinning upside down around a pole wearing a costume you could floss with definitely was not Art, and being painted lying on a bed wearing nothing but a smile and a small bunch of grapes was good solid Art, but putting your finger on why this was the case was a bit tricky. “No urns,” he said at last. “What urns?” said Nobby. “Nude women are only Art if there’s an urn in it,” said Fred Colon. This sounded a bit weak even to him, so he added: “Or a plinth. Both is best, o’course. It’s a secret sign, see, that they put in to say that it’s Art and okay to look at.” “What about a potted plant?” “That’s okay if it’s in an urn.” “What about if it’s not got an urn or a plinth or a potted plant?” said Nobby. “Have you one in mind, Nobby?” said Colon suspiciously. “Yes, The Goddess Anoia Arising from the Cutlery,”‡ said Nobby. “They’ve got it here. It was painted by a bloke with three i’s in his name, which sounds pretty artistic to me.” “The number of i’s is important, Nobby,” said Sergeant Colon gravely, “but in these situations you have to ask yourself: ‘Where’s the cherub?’ If there’s a little fat pink kid holding a mirror or a fan or similar, then it’s still okay. Even if he’s grinning. Obviously you can’t get urns everywhere.” ‡Anoia is the Ankh-Morpork Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers. (pp. 40-41)"

"“I can tell you anything you need to know,” said Vimes. “Yes, Your Grace, but that is not how an inquiry works. I must act completely independently. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Your Grace.” “I know that one,” said Vimes. “Who watches the watchmen? Me, Mr. Pessimal.” “Ah, but who watches you, Your Grace?” said the inspector with a brief smile. “I do that, too. All the time,” said Vimes. “Believe me.” (p. 17)"

"There was more…yes, call it venom in the air. Too much ancient politics, too many chips handed down from shoulder to shoulder. Too much boozing, too. (p. 23)"

"He preached to the superiority of dwarf over troll, and that the duty of every dwarf was to follow in the footsteps of their forefathers and remove trollkind from the face of the world. It was written in some holy book, apparently, so that made it okay, and probably compulsory. (p. 24)"

"Commander Vimes says that when life hands you a mess of spaghetti, just keep pulling until you find the meatball."

"“I wouldn’t know anything about that, sir.” That was an automatic reaction; it made life simpler. (p. 187)"

"“It’s only stamps, sir,” said Cheery. “I mean, there’s no law against stamps…” “There ought to be one against being a bloody fool!” “If there was, sir, we’d be on overtime every day!” said Cheery, grinning. (p. 26)"

"“Good Morning, Insert Name Here! I am the Dis-Organizer Mark Five, the Gooseberry™. How may I—” it began, speaking fast in order to get as much said as possible before the inevitable interruption. “I swear I switched you off,” said Vimes. “You threatened me with a hammer,” said the imp accusingly, and rattled the tiny bars. “He threatens state-of-the-Craft technomancy with a hammer, everybody!” it shouted. “He doesn’t even fill in the registration card! That’s why I have to call him Insert Nam—” (p. 56)"

"They think they’re so grown-up! But they’re still no better than babies in the sandpit, squabbling over mud pies. I see their lies and excuses and fears. They never grow up, not really. They never look up and open their eyes. They stay children their whole lives."

"I can fake sincerity so well that even I can’t tell."

"Sometimes the truth is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from the totality of what is known."

"Peel away the lies, and the truth would emerge, naked and ashamed and with nowhere else to hide."

"Maybe it was like the Post Office, maybe the profit turned up spread around the whole of society."

"If there’s one thing a wizard hates, it’s having to wait while the person in front of them is of two minds about coleslaw. It’s a salad bar, they say, it’s got the kind of stuff salad bars have, if it was surprising it wouldn’t be a salad bar, you’re not here to look at it. What do you expect to find? Rhino chunks? Pickled coelacanth?"

"“You can’t do that!” Greenyham protested weakly, but the fire had drained out of him. Mr. Stowley had collapsed on the floor, with his head in his hands. “Can I not?” said Vetinari. “I am a tyrant. It’s what we do.”"

"They’d saved the city with gold more easily, at that point, than any hero could have managed with steel. But, in truth, it had not exactly been gold, or even the promise of gold, but more like the fantasy of gold, the fairy dream that the gold is there, at the end of the rainbow, and will continue to be there forever—provided, naturally, that you don’t go and look. This is known as Finance."

"He ought to be ashamed. It was one thing to put words in the mouths of the gods; priests did it all the time. But this, this was a step too far. You had to be some kind of bastard to think of something like this."

"Every organization needs at least one person who knows what’s going on, and why it’s happening, and who’s doing it."

"You did what you were told or you didn’t get paid, and if things went wrong it wasn’t your problem. It was the fault of whatever idiot has accepted this message for sending in the first place. No one cared about you, and everyone at headquarters was an idiot. It wasn’t your fault, no one listened to you. Headquarters had even started an Employee of the Month scheme to show how much they cared. That was how much they didn’t care."

"It was like looking for piranhas in a river choked with weeds. There were a lot of bones on the bottom. But, although sometimes you thought you’d glimpsed a flash of silver, you could never be sure you’d seen a fish. The only way to be sure was to jump in."

"What was magic, after all, but something that happened at the snap of a finger? Where was the magic in that? It was mumbled words and weird drawings in old books, and in the wrong hands it was dangerous as hell, but not half as dangerous as it could be in the right hands. The universe was full of the stuff; it made the stars stay up and the feet stay down. But what was happening now…this was magical. Ordinary men had dreamed it up and put it together, building towers on rafts in swamps and across the frozen spines of mountains. They cursed and, worse, used logarithms. They’d waded through rivers and dabbled in trigonometry. They hadn’t dreamed, in the way people usually used the word, but they’d imagined a different world, and bent metal around it. And out of all the sweat and swearing and mathematics this…thing, dropping words across the world as softly as starlight."

"The people who guard the rainbow don’t like those who get in the way of the sun."

"You know how to pray, don’t you? You just put your hands together—and hope."

"There was a pregnant pause. It gave birth to a lot of little pauses, each one more deeply embarrassing than its parent."

"It was the heart of any scam or fiddle. Keep the punter uncertain, or, if he is certain, make him certain of the wrong thing."

"“But the gods are on his side, Reacher,” said Nutmeg. “Let’s talk about that, shall we?” said Gilt. “Does that claim strike anyone else as odd? The gods are not generally known for no-frills gifts, are they? Especially not ones that you can bite. No, these days they restrict themselves to things like grace, patience, fortitude, and inner strength. Things you can’t see. Things that have no value. Gods tend to be more interested in prophets, not profits, a-ha.”"

"People enjoy the experience of being fooled, if it promises a certain amount of entertainment."

"Sending no messages would send quite the wrong message."

"How could people be so stupid? They seemed to cling to ignorance because it smelled familiar."

"Meaningless, stupid words, from people without wisdom or intelligence or any skill beyond the ability to water the currency of expression. Oh, the Grand Trunk stood for everything, from life and liberty to Mom’s homemade Distressed Pudding. It stood for everything, except anything."

"“But he is a man of…ingenious resource.” That seemed to Moist to be a very careful way of saying “murderous bastard.”"

"Pony sighed. They never took an interest. It was just money. They didn’t know how anything worked. And then suddenly they needed to know, and you had to use baby talk."

"Always remember that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show."

"Incidentally, it’s best not to argue with the nursing staff. I find the best course of action is to throw some chocolates in one direction and hurry off in the other while their attention is distracted."

"He didn’t say this aloud, because although an elderly man probably has a lot less future than a man of twenty, he is far more careful about it…"

"“You speak to the gods and the gods listen,” said Miss Dearheart, grinning. “They told you where the treasure was. Now, that’s what I call religion. Incidentally, how did you know the money was there?” “You don’t believe in any gods?” “No, of course not. Not while people like Reacher Gilt walk under the sky. All there is, is us.”"

"“He’s a great believer in natural medicine, you see. He doesn’t trust doctors.” “Really?” said Dr. Lawn. “He retains some vestige of sanity, then.”"

"The only way to get something to turn up when you need it is to need it to turn up."

"It couldn’t happen. It shouldn’t happen. But, you never knew…this time it might. Moist recognized that hope. It was how he’d made his living. You knew that the man running the Find the Lady game was going to win, you knew that people in distress didn’t sell diamond rings for a fraction of their value, you knew that life generally handed you the sticky end of the stick, and you knew that the gods didn’t pick some everyday undeserving tit out of the population and hand them a fortune. Except that, this time, you might be wrong, right? It might just happen, yes? And this was known as the greatest of treasures, which is Hope. It was a good way of getting poorer really very quickly, and staying poor. It could be you. But it wouldn’t be."

"It was garbage, but it had been cooked by an expert. Oh, yes. You had to admire the way perfectly innocent words were mugged, ravished, stripped of all true meaning and decency, and then sent to walk the gutter for Reacher Gilt, although “synergistically” had probably been a whore from the start."

"In one way or another, are we not all looking for our cow?"

"Presumably he was insane, by the usual human standards, but it was hard to tell; the phrase “differently normal” might do instead."

"When Reacher Gilt talks about freedom he means his, not anyone else’s."

"There was a party of well-dressed people with Gilt, and as they progressed across the room the whole place began to revolve around the big man, gold being very dense and having a gravity all of its own."

"But what he was intending wouldn’t be stealing. It might not even be breaking the law. Fooling a maître d’ was practically a public service."

"“All right, all right, I really didn’t want to go into this, but it’s against my religion!” said Moist, who’d had time to think. “We’re forbidden to have any image made of us. It removes part of the soul, you know.” “And you believe that?” said Sacharissa. “Really?” “Er, no. No. Of course not. Not as such. But…but you can’t treat religion as a sort of buffet, can you? I mean, you can’t say ‘Yes please, I’ll have some of the Celestial Paradise and a helping of the Divine Plan but go easy on the kneeling and none of the Prohibition of Images, they give me wind.’ It’s table d’hôte or nothing, otherwise…well, it could get silly.”"

"“You have made quite a splash,” said Vetinari, smiling, “as the fish said to the man with the lead weight tied to his feet.”"

"And the nice thing about a stake through the heart was that it also worked on non-vampires."

"That was an important rule of any game: always make it easy for people to give you money."

"Not doing any magic at all was the chief task of wizards—not “not doing magic” because they couldn’t do magic, but not doing magic when they could do and didn’t. Any ignorant fool can fail to turn someone else into a frog. You have to be clever to refrain from doing it when you knew how easy it was. There were places in the world commemorating those times when wizards hadn’t been quite as clever as that, and on many of them the grass would never grow again."