Men at Arms/Quotes

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


If the Creator had said, "Let there be light" in Ankh-Morpork, he'd have gotten no further because of all the people saying "What colour?"

From the back, Vetinari looked like a carnivorous flamingo.

Cuddy had only been a guard for a few days, but already he had absorbed one important and basic fact: it is almost impossible for anyone to be in a street without breaking the law.

The Battle of Koom Valley is the only one known to history where both sides ambushed each other.

Carrot was two metres tall but he'd been brought up as a dwarf, and then further up as a human.

"Young Edward thinks that there is no lake of blood too big to wade through to put a rightful king on a throne, no deed too base in defence of a crown. A romantic, in fact."

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

He was said to have the body of a twenty-five year old, although no one knew where he kept it.
—On Nobby.
Pride is all very well, but a sausage is a sausage.

The river Ankh is probably the only river in the universe on which the investigators can chalk the outline of the corpse.

The Alchemist's Guild is opposite the Gambler's Guild. Usually. Sometimes it's above it, or below it, or falling in bits around it.

Sham Harga had run a successful eatery for many years by always smiling, never extending credit, and realizing that most of his customers wanted meals properly balanced between the four food groups: sugar, starch, grease and burnt crunchy bits.

Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

Being a werewolf meant having the dexterity and jaw power to instantly rip out a man's jugular. It was a trick of her father's that had always annoyed her mother, especially when he did it just before meals.

"It's got three keyboards and a hundred extra knobs, including twelve with '?' on them."
—The Unseen University Organ, as designed by B. S. Johnson

The Librarian of Unseen University had unilaterally decided to aid comprehension by producing an Orang-utan/Human Dictionary. He'd been working on it for three months. It wasn't easy. He'd got as far as "Oook".

"It could be a torture chamber or a dungeon or a hideous pit or anything!"
"It's just a student's bedroom, sergeant."
"You see?"

The maze was so small that people got lost looking for it.
—Bloody Stupid Johnson, for all your landscaping needs.

He was a good copper. That had got said at every guard funeral Vimes had ever attended. It'd probably be said even at Corporal Nobbs' funeral, although everyone would have their fingers crossed behind their backs. It was what you had to say.


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