"Vampires are so easy to kill, they point out. There are dozens of ways to dispatch them quite apart from the stake through the heart which also works on normal people."

"Lancre operated on Feudal system, which was to say everyone feuded all the time and handed on the fight to their descendants."

"Mythology is just the folktales of people who won because they had bigger swords!"

"He'd noticed that sex bore some resemblance to cookery: it fascinated people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they created vast banquets in their imagination - but at the end of the day they'd settle quite happily for egg and chips. If it was well done and maybe had a slice of tomato."

"A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores."

“So this is diplomacy. It’s like lying, only to a better class of people.”

"All he knew was that you couldn't hope to try for the big stuff, like world peace and happiness, but you might just about be able to achieve some tiny deed that'd make the world, in a small way, a better place. Like shooting someone."

" It was turning out to be one of those days. The sort you got every day."

" It is in the nature of the universe that the person who always keeps you waiting ten minutes will, on the day you are ten minutes tardy, have been ready ten minutes early and will make a point of not mentioning this."

" Most people will shy away from killing people they haven’t been introduced to."

"Sometimes glass glitters more than diamonds because it has more to prove."

"Ah," said Mr Pin. "Right. I remember. You are concerned citizens." He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where 'traditional values' meant 'hang someone'."

"When people say "clearly" something that means there's a huge crack in their argument and they know things aren't clear at all."

"Nothing has to be true forever. Just for long enough."

"I have certainly noticed that groups of clever and intelligent people are capable of really stupid ideas."

"Mr Tulip raised a trembling hand. 'Is this the bit where my whole life passes in front of my eyes?' he said.

NO, THAT WAS THE BIT JUST NOW.

'Which bit?'

THE BIT, said Death, BETWEEN YOUR BEING BORN AND YOUR DYING."

"The mountains of madness have many little plateaux of sanity."

"The universe required everything to be observed, lest it cease to exist."

“Against one perfect moment, the centuries beat in vain.”

“The wise man does not seek enlightenment, he waits for it."

“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”

“Sometimes I really think people ought to have to pass a proper exam before they're allowed to be parents. Not just the practical, I mean.”

“Look, that's why there's rules, understand? So that you think before you break 'em.”

“The thing is, I mean, there’s times when you look at the universe and you think, “What about me?” and you can just hear the universe replying, “Well, what about you?” ”

“When you look into the abyss, it’s not supposed to wave back.”

“Sometimes thinking is like talking to another person, but that person is also you.”

“They were learning fast, or at least collecting data, which they considered to be the same as learning.”

“It makes you wonder if there is anything to astrology after all.’ ‘Oh, there is,’ said Susan. ‘Delusion, wishful thinking and gullibility.”

“The only appropriate state of the heart is joy."

“If you told humans what the future held, it wouldn't.”

“If you don't turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else's.”

“A good plan isn't one where someone wins, it's where nobody thinks they've lost.”

“Listen, Peaches, trickery is what humans are all about," said the voice of Maurice. "They're so keen on tricking one another all the time that they elect governments to do it for them.”

“The trouble with thinking was that, once you started, you went on doing it.”

“Here's what I suggest," he said. "You pretend that rats can think, and I'll promise to pretend that humans can think, too.”

“To be a leader you have to learn to shout! But after you've learned to shout, you have to learn not to!”

“I am not so blind that I can't see darkness.”

“It’s odd…but we didn’t know the shadows were there until we had the light.”

"No! Please! I'll tell you whatever you want to know!" the man yelled.
"Really?" said Vimes. "What's the orbital velocity of the moon?"
"What?"
"Oh, you'd like something simpler?

"But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions."


"As I recall, they used to sing it after battles," he said. "I've seen old men cry when they sing it," he added.
"Why? It sounds cheerful."
They were remembering who they were not singing it with..."

"Two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it."

"Raising the flag and singing the anthem are, while somewhat suspicious, not in themselves acts of treason."

"Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces."

"Y’know ,’ he said, ‘it’s very hard to talk quantum using a language originally designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is."

"He'd been a successful soldier, as these things went; he'd generally been on the winning side, and had killed more of the enemy by good if dull tactics than his own men by bad but exciting ones."

"Mums are mums, lance-constable. They don't like to see men managing by themselves, in case that sort of thing catches on."

“Lots of people would be as cowardly as me if they were brave enough.”

"Oh, Mighty One," he began, always a safe beginning and the religious equivalent of "To Whom It May Concern"

“Not craftsmen, my lord" he said. "I have no use for people who have learned the limits of the possible”

“On the Kite, the situation was being 'workshopped'. This is the means by which people who don't know anything get together to pool their ignorance.”

“That's what prayers are...it's frightened people trying to make friends with the bully!”

“...if we wanted people to fly, we would have given them wings."
"You gave me wings when you showed me birds.”


In the study of his dark house on the edge of Time, Death looked at the wooden box. PERHAPS I SHALL TRY ONE MORE TIME, he said. He reached down and lifted up a small kitten, patted it on the head, lowered it gently into the box, and closed the lid. THE CAT DIES WHEN THE AIR RUNS OUT? "I suppose it might, sir," said Albert, his manservant. "But I don't reckon that's the point. If I understand it right, you don't know if the cat's dead or alive until you look at it." THINGS WILL HAVE COME TO A PRETTY PASS, ALBERT, IF I DID NOT KNOW WHETHER A THING WAS DEAD OR ALIVE WITHOUT HAVING TO GO AND LOOK. "Er... the way the theory goes, sir. it's the act of lookin' that determines if it's alive or not." Death looked hurt. ARE YOU SUGGESTING I WILL KILL THE CAT JUST BY LOOKING AT IT? "It's not quite like that, sir." I MEAN, IT's NOT AS IF I MAKE FACES OR ANYTHING. "To be honest with you, sir, I don't think even the wizards understand the uncertainty business." said Albert. "We didn't truck with that class of stuff in my day. If you weren't certain, you were dead." Death nodded. It was getting hard to keep up with the times. Take parallel dimensions. Parasite dimensions, now, he understood them. He lived in one. They were simply universes that weren't quite complete in themselves and could only exist by clinging on to a host universe, like remora fish. But parallel dimensions meant that anything you did, you didn't do somewhere else. This presented exquisite problems to a being who was, by nature, definite. It was like playing poker against an infinite number of opponents. He opened the box and took out the kitten. It stared at him with the normal mad amazement of kittens everywhere. I DON'T HOLD WITH CRUELTY TO CATS, said Death, putting it gently on the floor.

The banality of evil!

“I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people,” said the man. “You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.”

He waved his thin hand toward the city and walked over to the window.

“A great rolling sea of evil,” he said, almost proprietorially. “Shallower in some places, of course, but deeper, oh, so much deeper in others. But people like you put together little rafts of rules and vaguely good intentions and say, this is the opposite, this will triumph in the end. Amazing!” He slapped Vimes good-naturedly on the back.

“Down there,” he said, “are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathesomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no. I’m sorry if this offends you,” he added, patting the captain’s shoulder, “but you fellows really need us.”

“Yes, sir?” said Vimes quietly.

“Oh, yes. We’re the only ones who know how to make things work. You see, the only thing the good people are good at is overthrowing the bad people. And you’re good at that, I’ll grant you. But the trouble is that it’s the only thing you’re good at. One day it’s the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it’s everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no one’s been taking out the trash. Because the bad people know how to plan. It’s part of the specification, you might say. Every evil tyrant has a plan to rule the world. The good people don’t seem to have the knack.”

“Maybe. But you’re wrong about the rest!” said Vimes. “It’s just because people are afraid, and alone—” He paused. It sounded pretty hollow, even to him.
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.”