"I don't want unnecessary violence, sergeant," said Blouse."Right you are, sir!" said the sergeant. "Carborundum! First man comes through that door runnin', I want him nailed to the wall!" He caught the lieutenant's eye, and added: "But not too hard!"

"And the people of Ankh-Morpork are so thirsty for novelty that the whole city is, you might say, hurrying the future along for the sheer joy of watching its progress."

"Speak softly and employ a huge man with a crowbar."

"We've strayed into a zone with a high magical index,' he said. 'Don't ask me how. Once upon a time a really powerful magic field must have been generated here, and we're feeling the after-effects.'Precisely,' said a passing bush."

"Do you understand what's going on here?Hodgesaargh took another slow look at the scene. "No, he said."In that case's not my job to understand this sort of thing, said the falconer. "I wasn't trained. Probably takes a lot of training, understanding this. That's your job. And her job. Can you understand what's going on when a bird's been trained and'll make a kill and still came back to the wrist?"Well, no-"There you are, then. So that's all right. Cup of tea, was it?"

"Because the world all twisted up and wrong, like distorted glass, only came back into focus if you looked at it through the bottom of a bottle."

"Then Tak looked upon the stone and it was trying to come alive, and Tak smiled, and wrote All things strive.And for the service the stone had given, he fashioned it into the first Troll, and delighted in the life that came unbidden."

"But a girl starting out in life might well say to herself: 'Is this it? You worked hard and denied yourself things and what you got at the end was hard work and self-denial?"

"Yes, but nomes aren't hard to make, said Dorcas. "You just need other nomes. "You're weird."

"The living often don't appreciate how complicated the world looks when you are dead, because while death frees the mind from the straitjacket of three dimensions it also cuts it away from Time, which is only another dimension. So while the cat that rubbed up against his invisible legs was undoubtedly the same cat that he had seen a few minutes before, it was also quite clearly a tiny kitten and a fat, half-blind old moggy and every stage in between. All at once. Since it had started off small it looked like a white, catshaped carrot, a description that will have to do until people invent proper four-dimensional adjectives."

"The Fool held his breath. On long nights on the hard flagstones he had dreamed of women like her. Although, if he really thought about it, not much like her; they were better endowed around the chest, their noses weren't so red and pointed, and their hair tended to flow more. But the Fool's libido was bright enough to tell the difference between the impossible and the conceivably attainable, and hurriedly cut in some filter circuits."

"Most witches don't believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don't believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman."

"Light died in the west. Night and tears took the Nation. The star of Water drifted among the clouds like a murderer softly leaving the scene of the crime."

"Mind you, said Ponder, "the universe does have a rhythm. Day and night, light and dark, life and death- "Chicken soup and croutons, said Ridcully. "Well, not evert metaphor bears close examination"."

"If there were such a thing as an inter-city thieving contest, Ankh-Morpork would bring home the trophy and probably everyone's wallets."

"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. Its table d hA te or nothing, otherwise well, it would be silly."

"D'yer see it? This finger, laddie, could send ye to meet yer Maker!Sgt. Deisenburger stared at the black and purple nail a few inches from his face. As an offensive weapon it rated quite highly, especially if it was ever used in the preparation of food."

"The wizards were civilized men of considerable education and culture. When faced with being inadvertently marooned on a desert island they understood immediately that the first thing to do was place the blame."

"Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self."

"I don't know what to do, he said. "No harm in that. I've never known what to do, said Rincewind with hollow cheerfulness. "Been completely at a loss my whole life. He hesitated. "I think it's called being human, or something."

"Fear is a strange soil. It grows obedience like corn, which grow in straight lines to make weeding easier. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground."

"Oh, my dear Vimes, history changes all the time. It is constantly being re-examined and re-evaluated, otherwise how would we be able to keep historians occupied? We can't possibly allow people with their sort of minds to walk around with time on their hands."

"It was a large room, heavily outfitted with the usual badly ventilated furnaces, rows of bubbling crucibles, and one stuffed alligator. Things floated in jars. The air smelled of a limited life expectancy."

"At last the magic caught, and she managed to vault clumsily onto it before it trundled into the night sky as gracefully as a duck with one wing missing."

"He's got a box with a demon in it that draws pictures," said Rincewind shortly. "Do what the madman says and he will give you gold."

"Om rubed his head. This wasn't god-like thinking. It seemed simpler when you were up here. It was all a game. You forgot that it wasn't a game down there. People died. Bits got chopped off. We're like eagles up here, he thought. Sometimes we show tortoise how to fly. Then we let go."

"But the purpose of the book is not the horror, it is horror's defeat."

"Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up."

"That's old Twoflower, Rincewind thought. It's not that he doesn't appreciate beauty, he just appreciates it in his own way. I mean, if a poet sees a daffodil he stares at it and writes a long poem about it, but Twoflower wanders off to find a book on botany. He just looks at things, but nothing he looks at is ever the same again. Including me, I suspect."

"Blessings be on this house," Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a witch. It concentrated people's minds on what other things might be on this house."

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

"Here you are. Would you like some pickles?"Pickles gives me the wind something awful."In that case-"Oh, I wasn't saying no, Mistress Weatherwax said, taking two large pickled cucumbers."

"Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is."

"The Dean leaned toward an ear."I was saying, he said loudly, "that we didn't know the meaning of the word 'sex' when we were young."That's true. That's very true, said Poons. He stared reflectively at the flames. "Did we ever, mm, find out, do you remember?"

"People said that there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but it wasn't true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigibly lawless."

"Gytha Ogg, you wouldn't be a witch if you couldn't jump to conclusions, right? Nanny nodded. "Oh, yes. There was no shame in it. Sometimes there wasn't time to do anything else but take a flying leap. Sometimes you had to trust to experience and intuition and general awareness and take a running jump. Nanny herself could clear quite a tall conclusion from a standing start."

"He shrugged. - They're just people - he said. - They're just doing what people do. Sir.Lord Vetinari gave him a friendly smile.- Of course, of course - he said. - You have to believe that, I appreciate. Otherwise you'd go quite mad. Otherwise you'd think you're standing on a feather-thin bridge over the vaults of Hell. Otherwise existence would be a dark agony and the only hope would be that there is no life after death. I quite understand."

"It is a mystery,' said Detritus.Vimes grinned mirthlessly. It was a mystery. And he didn't like mysteries. Mysteries had a way of getting bigger if you didn't solve them quickly. Mysteries pupped."

"Peace?' said Vetinari. 'Ah, yes, defined as period of time to allow for preparation for the next war."

"And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think. So who is "me"?"

"The female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord." Vetinari looked at his secretary in surprise. "Well, of course it is. It has to deal with the male one."

"It's like people care more about their pride than about what's correct, about the truth."

"NAUGHTY AND NICE? said Death. BUT IT'S EASY TO BE NICE IF YOU'RE RICH. IS THIS FAIR?Albert wanted to argue. He wanted to say, Really? In that case, how come so many of the rich buggers is bastards? And being poor don't mean being naughty, neither."

"Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle. It's a feeling inside that can hardly be contained."

"When people talk about their great past they're usually trying to excuse the mediocre present."

"I wonder if it's like this for mountain climbers, he thought. You climb bigger and bigger mountains and you know that one day one of them is going to be just that bit too steep. But you go on doing it, because it's so-o good when you breathe the air up there. And you know you'll die falling."

"William: "I'm sure we can all pull together, sir."Vetinari: "Oh, I do hope not. Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions."

"There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books."

"The Librarian was not familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical. You knew where you were with kindness, especially if you were holding a pie it had just given you."

"Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices."