Guards! Guards! Quotes
"They could put you in mind of a can of sardines, if you thought sardines were huge and scaly and proud and arrogant."
"The city was a woman. Roaring, ancient, centuries old."
"The only light was a faint octarine flicker from the tiny windows of the new High Energy Magic building."
"In the silence of the night the books talked to one another."
"The light from the shelves didn’t so much illuminate as highlight the darkness."
"It was said that, since vast amounts of magic can seriously distort the mundane world, the Library did not obey the normal rules of space and time."
"Being a guard must have meant something, once."
"He smoked incessantly but the weird thing, Carrot noticed, was that any cigarette smoked by Nobby became a dog-end almost instantly but remained a dog-end indefinitely or until lodged behind his ear, which was a sort of nicotine Elephant’s Graveyard."
"The conversation dipped fractionally as the two guards wandered in, and then rose to its former level."
"It's rude to butt in. We'll wait until he's finished, and then ask him if he wants any assistance."
"No one could call him unreasonable about the matter. Why, hadn't he founded most of them himself?"
"Human nature, the Patrician always said, was a marvelous thing. Once you understood where its levers were."
"This is practically a criminal offense, wasting Watch time."
"There's no room in this Brotherhood for Brothers who are not behind us all the way."
"If it can talk, it can negotiate. If it can negotiate, then I have it by the small scales."
"Once you've ruled out the impossible then whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth."
"You could be a fast guard or you can be an old guard, but you can't be a fast old guard."
"You're wondering, after all this excitement, has it got enough flame left? And, y'know, I ain't so sure myself..."
"That was just to get your attention," he said, pokerfaced. "The next one will be a little lower."
"We don't have any of them laws anymore! That's all old stuff! It's all more wossname now. Pragmatic."
"We're here to protect and to serve, aren't we, Captain."
"Goodboy Bindle Featherstone bore up stoically under the weight of the name, and sniffed a table leg."
"People will be so keen to see the boy win, they won't think twice about it! Depend upon it!"
"Books bend space and time. One reason the owners of those aforesaid little rambling, poky secondhand bookshops always seem slightly unearthly is that many of them really are."
"You can be a fast guard or you can be an old guard, but you can't be a fast old guard."
"Vimes’s legs gave in at that point and decided that they might allow themselves to be heroic legs for a while."
"He got several yards before the essential bad judgment of this move dawned on him."
"His vertebrae and knees were trying to fuse into one lump."
"The Ramkins hadn’t bred for beauty, they’d bred for healthy solidity and big bones."
"She solved the immediate problem by grabbing the edge of the trough and hauling herself upright."
"It’s a matter of making your opponent explode, you see."
"Some daft creature rolls on its back, you disembowel it. That’s how they look at it. Almost human, really."
"What d’you call them things, like thin stairs? – Ladders."
"The best bit is when you stick the knife in and crack the fat and all the browny gold stuff bubbles up."
"Say what you liked about Captain Vimes, he’d had style."
"The night had come. There was no hope for them."
"It was six of the clock. And all wasn’t well."
"Don’t blame me, I just read the things. I don’t write ’em."
"A small price to pay, I’m sure you will agree, for the safety and protection of the city."
"We defy you! If you kill me, you might as well kill all of us!"
"I wouldn’t mind betting that at the start he really thought that what he was doing was all for the best."
"The chances are that his heart isn’t in the job."
"I reckon this damn city and the dragon just about deserve one another."
"Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind."
"It's a million to one chance, but it might just work."
"We meant that if you tried your favorite kick, Nobby, it wouldn’t work."
"They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no."