"He was not, by the standard definitions, a bad man; in the same way a plague-bearing rat is not, from a dispassionate point of view, a bad animal. (p. 27)"

"It was a strange laugh, totally mirthless and vaguely birdlike. It was very much like its owner, who was what you would get if you extracted fossilized genetic material from something in amber and then gave it a suit. (p. 27)"

"The man gave a shrug that indicated that, although the world did indeed have many problems, this was one of them that was not his. (p. 27)"

"The horse watched him warily. It was considerably more intelligent than most horses, although this was not a difficult achievement. (p. 20)"

"She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept on trying to interfere with it. (p. 15)"

"Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book. (p. 15)"

"The question seldom addressed is where Medusa had snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarrassing problem when it keeps biting the top of the deodorant bottle. (p. 14)"

"But said, nevertheless. And, if they're said with the right passion and the gods are feeling bored, sometimes the universe will re-form itself around words like that. Words have always had the power to change the world."

"It is said that whomsoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In fact, whomsoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on its side. It's more interesting, and doesn't take so long. (p. 8)"

"Certain things have to happen before other things. Gods play games with the fates of men. But first they have to get all the pieces on the board, and look all over the place for the dice. (p. 7)"

"But if it is true that the act of observing changes the thing which is observed,‡ it's even more true that it changes the observer."

"There was another of those long, long pauses, wherein may be seen the possibilities of several different futures. (p. 367)"

"...and the fact that he'd been operating on pure adrenalin, which soon presents its bill and does not give credit. (pp. 357-358)"

"Personal isn't the same as important. (p. 354)"

"Silence slammed in like a thunderclap. (p. 354)"

"If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat."

"The problem is, people only think for themselves if you tell them to. (p. 305)"

"Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness. (p. 253)"

"We are armed with the truth. What can harm us if we are armed with the truth?"

"Quirke wasn't actually a bad man. He didn't have the imagination. He dealt more in that sort of generalized low-grade unpleasantness which slightly tarnishes the soul of all who come into contact with it.†"

"If there was crime, there should be punishment. If the specific criminal should be involved in the punishment process then this was a happy accident, but if not, then any criminal would do, and since everyone was undoubtedly guilty of something, the net result was that, in general terms, justice was done. (p. 218)"

""He only drinks when he gets depressed," said Carrot."

"The axiom "Honest men have nothing to fear from the police" is currently under review by the Axioms Appeal Board. (p. 174)"

"Someone was running, and they were chasing. They were chasing because he was running, and he was running because they were chasing. (p. 170)"

""Didn't he have a crossbow?" he said. "Bit odd, going after interesting rare butterflies with a crossbow."..."

"And they were also slightly less intelligent than he was. This is a quality you should always pray for in your would-be murderer. (p. 150)"

"There was much pushing and shoving and honking of noses and falling of prats. It was a scene to make a happy man slit his wrists on a fine spring morning. (pp. 138-139)"

"If you had enough money, you could hardly commit crimes at all. You just perpetrated amusing little peccadilloes. (p. 111)"

"He'd faced trolls and dwarfs and dragons, but now he was having to meet an entirely new species."

"When you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, "Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!" or "Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!" (p. 77)"

"That was the thing about death. When it happened to you, you were among the first to know. (p. 76)"

"It was true than normal people couldn't hear Gaspode speak, because dogs don't speak. It's a well-known fact. It's well known at the organic level, like a lot of other well-known facts which overrule the observations of the senses. This is because if people went around noticing everything that was going on all the time, no one would ever get anything done.† Besides, almost all dogs don't talk. Ones that do are merely a statistical error, and can therefore be ignored."

"Royalty pollutes people's minds, boy. Honest men start bowing and bobbing just because someone's granddad was a bigger murdering bastard than theirs was. (p. 65)"

"A man can be defined by the things he hates. There were quite a lot of things that Captain Vimes hated. Assassins were near the top of the list, just after kings and the undead. (p. 56)"

"Vimes would be the first to admit that he wasn't a good copper, but he'd probably be spared the chore because lots of other people would happily admit it for him. There was a certain core of stubborn bloody-mindedness there which upset important people, and anyone who upsets important people is automatically not a good copper. (p. 55)"

"A couple of black-clad Assassins barred his way, in a polite manner which nevertheless indicated that impoliteness was a future option. (p. 51)"

"He was said to have the body of a twenty-five year old, although no one knew where he kept it. (p. 48)"

"It was a state of permanent inter-species vendetta and, like all good vendettas, didn't really need a reason any more. It was enough that it had always existed. Dwarfs hated trolls because trolls hated dwarfs, and vice versa. (p. 41)"

""Dwarfs and trolls get along like a house on fire," said Nobby. "Ever been in a burning house, miss?" (p. 40)"

"Fingers-Mazda, the first thief in the world, stole fire from the gods. But he was unable to fence it. It was too hot.†"

"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money."

"The Ramkins were more highly bred than a hilltop bakery, whereas Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving. (p. 33)"

"The problem with Destiny, of course, is that she is often not careful where she puts her finger. (p. 16)"

"That's just a legend. That's not real. Anyway, I've always been a bit puzzled about that story. What's so hard about pulling a sword out of a stone? The real work's already been done. You ought to make yourself useful and find the man who put the sword in the stone in the first place, eh? (p. 15)"

"Dwarfs are very attached to gold. Any highwayman demanding "Your money or your life" had better bring a folding chair and packed lunch and a book to read while the debate goes on. (p. 7)"

"He could think in italics. Such people need watching."

"There is such a thing as subtlety. You don't have to go around shouting "I've got a great big tonker!""

"You care for me a little bit, I do think," he admitted, "but I can't hang all my life on a little bit. You don't. You hang yours on Anne. You don't worry whether your relation with her is platonic or not, you only know it's big enough to hang a life on."