Guards! Guards!/Quotes

"[...] a number of offences of murder by means of a blunt instrument, to whit, a dragon, and many further offences of generalized abetting [...]"

"Have another drink, not-Corporal Nobby?" said Sergeant Colon unsteadily.
"I do not mind if I do, not-Sgt Colon," said Nobby.

—The joys of working undercover

Fabricati diem, Pvnc.

—The motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch

A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.

There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side.

All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional.

All dwarfs are by nature dutiful, serious, literate, obedient and thoughtful people whose only minor failing is a tendency, after one drink, to rush at enemies screaming "Arrrrrrgh!" and axing their legs off at the knee.

People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else."

It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military manoeuvres, right down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of.

Vetinari:You think there are the good people and the bad people. You are wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.

Lady Ramkin's bosom rose and fell like an empire.

Vimes: It's a metaphor of human bloody existence, a dragon. And if that wasn't bad enough, it's also a bloody great hot flying thing.

The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the date last shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.

A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practiced human sacrifice, except that they didn't really need to practice any more because they had got so good at it.

Thunder rolled. It rolled a six.

"Right, you bastards, you're... you're geography!"

The reason that cliches become cliches is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.

You have the effrontery to be squeamish. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape -- we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.

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