"You can’t ask questions, it’s magic. It doesn’t explain anything, it’s magic. You don’t know where it comes from, it’s magic! That’s what I don’t like about magic, it does everything by magic!” (p. 304)"

"Beating people up in little rooms…he knew where that led. And if you did it for a good reason, you’d do it for a bad one. You couldn’t say “we’re the good guys” and do bad-guy things. (p. 256)"

"The plain fact was that while Tawneee had a body that every other woman should hate her for, she compounded the insult by actually being very likable. This was because she had the self-esteem of a caterpillar and, as you found out after any kind of conversation with her, about the same amount of brain. Perhaps it all balanced out, perhaps some kindly god had said to her: “Sorry, kid, you are going to be thicker than a yard of lard, but the good news is, that’s not going to matter.” (p. 259)"

"And yet we say this. Here, in this cave at the end of the world, peace is made between dwarf and troll, and we will march beyond the hand of Death together. For the enemy is not Troll, nor is it Dwarf, but it is the baleful, the malign, the cowardly, the vessels of hatred, those who do a bad thing and call it good. (p. 364)"

"Alcohol didn’t seem to go to her brain at all. Maybe it couldn’t find it. But she was pleasant, easygoing company, if you avoided allusion, irony, sarcasm, repartee, satire, and words longer than “chicken.” (p. 259)"

"Some of us think the darkness isn’t a depth, it’s a state of mind. (p. 254)"

"“When a bull coo meets a lady coo, he disna have tae say, ‘My heart goes bang-bang-bang when I see your wee face,’ ’cuz it’s kinda built intae their heads. People have it more difficult. Romancin’ is verra important, ye ken. Basically it’s a way the boy can get close to the girl wi’oot her attackin’ him and scratchin’ his eyes oot.”"

"You can always find an excuse that your side will accept, and who cares what the enemy thinks? In the real world, it wouldn’t make any difference. (p. 249)"

"Darkness fell like an axe. (p. 272)"

"Vetinari drummed his fingers on the table. “What would you do if I asked you an outright question, Vimes?” “I’d tell you a downright lie, sir.” “Then I will not do so,” said Vetinari, smiling faintly. (p. 188)"

"“Their weapons are culturally very important to them, Vimes,” said Vetinari. “Yeah, sir, I know. I myself have a strong cultural bias against getting my brains bashed in and my knees cut off,” said Vimes. (p. 188)"

"A wise ruler thinks twice before directing violence against someone because he does not approve of what they say. (p. 192)"

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

"“Hold it!” Sally thrust both hands in front of her in a gesture of peace. “There’s something we’d better sort before this goes any further!” “Yeah?” “Yes. We’re both wearing nothing, we’re standing in what, you may have noticed, is increasingly turning into mud, and we’re squaring up to fight. Okay. But there’s something missing, yes?” “And that is…?” “A paying audience? We could make a fortune.” Sally winked. “Or we could do the job we came here to do.” (p. 174)"

"“We are naked, Lance Constable!” “Only technically. This mud really sticks.” “I mean underneath the mud!” said Angua. “Yes, but if we had clothes on we’d be naked underneath them, too!” Sally pointed out. (p. 183)"

"And I’m going home, Vimes repeated to himself. Everyone wants something from Vimes, even though I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Hell, I’m probably a spoon. (p. 225)"

"Coffee was only a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your slightly older self. (p. 186)"

"Vimes stared at him. When I first met you, you were chained to a wall like a watchdog and didn’t speak much beyond a grunt, he thought. Truly, the leopard can change his shorts. (p. 103)"

"Would a minute have mattered? No, probably not, although his young son appeared to have a very accurate internal clock. Possibly even two minutes would be okay. Three minutes, even. You could go to five, perhaps. But that was just it. If you could go to five minutes, then you’d go to ten, then half an hour, a couple of hours…and not see your son all evening. So that was that. Six o’clock, prompt. Every day. Read to Young Sam. No excuses. He’d promised himself that. No excuses. No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses. (p. 121)"

"Vimes try to think. Don’t think of it all as one big bucket of snakes. Think of it as one snake at a time. Try to sort it out. Now, what needs to be done first? Everything. All right, try a different approach. (pp. 142-143)"

"But I want you all, whatever, whoever you are, there is know this: I’ve got no patience with idiots who’ll drag a grudge across five hundred miles and a thousand years. (p. 102)"

"Usually she got her own way and he was happy to give it to her, but the unspoken agreement was that when he really insisted, she listened. It's a married couple thing. (pp. 237-238)"

"Cogito ergo sum, Insert Name Here. I exist, therefore I do sums! (p. 96)"

"Trolls with a message. It was unlikely to be an invitation to a literary lunch. (p. 98)"

"What we could do is die valiantly. I’ve seen men die valiantly. There’s no future in it. (p. 165)"

"Vimes had never got on with any game much more complex than darts. Chess in particular had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the kings lounged about doing nothing that always got to him; if only the pawns united, maybe talked the rooks around, the whole board could’ve been a republic in a dozen moves. (p. 67)"

"But maybe it was some mystic ceremony, and who’d look for sense there? (p. 85)"

"Some people would be asking: Whose side are you on? If you’re not with us, you’re against us. Huh. If you’re not an apple, you’re a banana… (p. 87)"

"“Then would you like to engage the handy-to-use Bluenose™ Integrated Messenger Service?” “What does that do?” said Vimes, with deep suspicion. The succession of Dis-Organizers he had owned had proved quite successful at very nearly sorting out all the problems that stemmed from owning them in the first place. “Er…basically, it means me running with a message to the nearest clacks tower really fast,” said the imp hopefully. “And do you come back?” said Vimes, hope also rising. “Absolutely!” “Thank you, no,” said Vimes. “How about a game of Splong!™, specially devised for the Mark Five?” pleaded the imp. “I have the bats right here. No? Perhaps you would prefer the ever-popular ‘Guess My Weight in Pigs’? Or I could whistle one of your favorite tunes? My iHum™ function enables me to remember up to one thousand five hundred of your all-time—” “You could try learning to use it, sir,” said Angua, as Vimes once again shut the lid on the protesting voice. “Did use one,” said Vimes. “Yup. As a doorstop,” rumbled Detritus, behind him. “I’m just not at home with technomancy, all right?” said Vimes. “End of discussion.” (pp. 56-57)"

"People needed to see coppers at a time like this. They gave the illusion that the whole world hadn’t gone insane. (p. 48)"

"The important thing is not to shout at this point, Vimes told himself. Do not…what do they call it…go postal? Treat this as a learning exercise. Find out why the world is not as you thought it was. Assemble the facts, digest the information, consider the implications. Then go postal. But with precision. (p. 53)"

"Vimes carefully lifted the top of the bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, and smiled inwardly. Good old Cheery. She knew what a Vimes BLT was all about. It was about having to lift up quite a lot of crispy bacon before you found the miserable skulking vegetables. You might never notice them at all. (p. 87)"

"Granny Weatherwax stopped pacing and looked at Miss Tick, who said: “Ah, yes…er…we are exploring every possibility—” “That means we don’t know,” said Granny. “That’s the truth of it. This is about gods, see? But yes, since you ask, they can be a bit touchy.”"

"“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)"

"“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)"

"“He said the government hushed it up.” “Yeah, but your mate Dave says the government always hushes things up, Nobby,” said Fred. “Well, they do.” “Except he always gets to hear about ’em, and he never gets hushed up,” said Fred. “I know you like to point the finger of scoff, Sarge, but there’s a lot goes on that we don’t know about.” “Like what, exactly,” Colon retorted. “Name me one thing that’s going on that you don’t know about. There—you can’t, can you?” (p. 43)"

"Vimes leaned back. “Don’t try to put me at my ease, Miss von Humpeding,” he said. “It makes me nervous when people do that. It’s not as though I have any ease to be put at.” (p. 46)"

"Could I ask you to look at things from my point of view? This is my job. This is what I am. I am, therefore I think. (p. 93)"

"“What was your last job?” “Didn’t have one. I was a musician.” (p. 47)"

"I think I’m looking at this wrong. It’s not my cow. It’s a sheep with a pitchfork. Unfortunately, it goes quack. (p. 249)"

"They looked uncertain. In theory, they should be stampeding up the steps. Moist knew what was holding them back. It was hope. It was the little voice inside that said: This isn’t really happening. It was the voice that drove people to turn out the same pocket three times in a fruitless search for lost keys. It was mad belief that the world is bound to start working properly again if I truly believe, and there will be keys. It was the voice that said “This can’t be happening” very loudly, in order to drown out the creeping dread that it was. He had about thirty seconds, while hope lasted."

"“I’m sure it can wait, Commander.” “Yes, sir. That’s the trouble, sir. That’s what it’s doing.” Vetinari waved a languid hand. “Full carts congesting the street, Vimes, is a sign of progress,” he declared. “Only in the figurative sense, sir,” said Vimes. (p. 9)"

"All the city’s departments got inspected from time to time, Vetinari had said. There was no reason why the Watch should be passed over, was there? It was, after all, a major drain on the city coffers. Vimes had pointed out that a drain was where things went to waste. Nevertheless, Vetinari had said. Just “nevertheless.” You couldn’t argue with “nevertheless.” (p. 15)"

"“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)"

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

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

"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."

"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)"

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