Moving Pictures/Quotes

The Librarian had seen many weird things in his time, but that had to be the 57th strangest.^[1]

"Woof bloody woof."

—Gaspode the Wonder Dog

It was the sort of thing you expected in the Street of Alchemists. The neighbours preferred explosions, which were at least identifiable and soon over. They were better than the smells, which crept up on you.

The Archchancellor's most important job, as the Bursar saw it, was to sign things, preferably, from the Bursar's point of view, without reading them first.

By and large, the only skill the alchemists of Ankh-Morpork had discovered so far was the ability to turn gold into less gold.

"If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter."

—On popcorn

Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.

And then you bit onto them, and learned once again that Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler could find a use for bits of an animal that the animal didn't know it had got. Dibbler had worked out that with enough fried onions and mustard people would eat anything.

"The thing is that Mr. Dibbler can even sell sausages to people who have bought them off him before."

"Why's it called Ming?" said the Archchancellor, on cue.
The Bursar tapped the pot. It went ming.

Azhural raised his staff. "It's fifteen hundred miles to Ankh-Morpork," he said. "We've got three hundred and sixty-three elephants, fifty carts of forage, the monsoon's about to break and we're wearing... we're wearing... sort of things, like glass, only dark... dark glass things on our eyes..."

People who used magic without knowing what they were doing usually came to a sticky end. All over the entire room, sometimes.

"It looks worse than you can imagine!"
"I can imagine some pretty bad things!"
"That's why I said worse!"

"Woof. In tones of low menace."

"There's nothin' wrong with bein' a son of a bitch."

"I can explain it in Dog, but you only listen in Human."

"Well, 'scuse me. I was jus' tryin' to save the world."

"If gharstely creatures from before the Dawna Time starts wavin' at you from under your bed, jus' you don't come complainin' to me."

"Messin' around with girls in thrall to Creatures from the Void never works out, take my word for it."

"Can't sing. Can't dance. Can handle a sword a little."

"Did I hear things, or can that little dog speak?" said Dibbler.
"He says he can't," said Victor. Dibbler hesitated.
"Well," he said, "I suppose he should know."

In retrospect, Victor was always a little unclear about those next few minutes. That's the way it goes. The moments that change your life are the ones that happen suddenly, like the one where you die.

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↑ He had a tidy mind.

[1] He had a tidy mind.

[1]