Guards Guards by Terry Pratchett
...[the Librarian] had been allowed to keep his job, which he was rather good at, although ‘allowed’ is not really the right word. It was the way he could roll his upper lip back to reveal more incredibly yellow teeth than any other mouth the University Council had ever seen before that somehow made sure the matter was never really raised. (GG)
It’s a terrible thing to be nearly sixteen and the wrong species. (GG)
When you spend a large part of your life underground, you develop a very literal mind. Dwarfs have no use for metaphor and simile. Rocks are hard, the darkness is dark. Start messing around with descriptions like that and you’re in big trouble, is their motto. (GG)
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. (GG)
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.’ (GG)
In the night time streets of Ankh-Morpork caution is an absolute. There is no such thing as moderately cautious. You are either very cautious, or you are dead. You might be walking around and breathing, but you’re dead, just the same. (GG)
The Patrician was not a man you shook a finger at unless you wanted to end up being able to count only to nine. (GG)
... You walk along the Streets at Night shouting, It's Twelve O'clock and All's Well. I said, What if it is not all well, and he said, You bloody find another street. (GG)
‘I shall deal with the matter momentarily,’ he said. It was a good word. It always made people hesitate. They were never quite sure whether he meant he’d deal with it now, or just deal with it briefly. And no-one ever dared ask. (GG)
The thief shuffled out. It was always like this with the Patrician, he reflected bitterly. You came to him with a perfectly reasonable complaint. Next thing you knew, you were shuffling backwards, bowing and scraping, relieved simply to be getting away. You had to hand it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly. If you didn’t, he sent men to come and take it away. (GG)
One of the remarkable innovations introduced by the Patrician was to make the Thieves’ Guild responsible for theft, with annual budgets, forward planning and, above all, rigid job protection. Thus, in return for an agreed average level of crime per annum, the thieves themselves saw to it that unauthorised crime was met with the full force of Injustice, which was generally a stick with nails in it. (GG)
He was vaguely aware that he drank to forget. What made it rather pointless was that he couldn’t remember what it was he was forgetting any more. In the end he just drank to forget about drinking. (GG)
Sergeant Colon owed thirty years of happy marriage to the fact that Mrs. Colon worked all day and Sergeant Colon worked all night. They communicated by means of notes. He got her tea ready before he left at night, she left his breakfast nice and hot in the oven in the mornings. They had three grown-up children, all born, Vimes had assumed, as a result of extremely persuasive handwriting. (GG)
The only reason you couldn’t say that Nobby was close to the animal kingdom was that the animal kingdom would get up and walk away. (GG)
Colon was a sizeist, at least when it came to people smaller than himself. (GG)
Nobby had survived any number of famous massacres by not being there. (GG)
‘‘E’s fighting in there!’ he stuttered, grabbing the captain’s arm.
‘All by himself?’ said the captain.
‘No, with everyone!’ shouted Nobby, hopping from one foot to the other. (GG)
He appeared to have no vice that anyone could discover. You’d have thought, with that pale, equine face, that he’d incline towards stuff with whips, needles, and young women in dungeons. The other lords could have accepted that. Nothing wrong with whips and needles, in moderation. But the Patrician apparently spent his evenings studying reports and, on special occasions, if he could stand the excitement, playing chess. (GG)
There are many horrible sights in the multiverse. Somehow, though, to a soul attuned to the subtle rhythms of a library, there a few worse sights than a hole where a book ought to be. (GG)
Ankh-Morpork! Brawling city of a hundred thousand souls! And, as the Patrician privately observed, ten times that number of actual people. The fresh rain glistened on the panorama of towers and rooftops, all unaware of the teeming, rancorous world it was dropping into. Luckier rain fell on upland sheep, or whispered gently over forests, or pattered somewhat incestuously into the sea. Rain that fell on Ankh-Morpork, though, was rain that was in trouble. They did terrible things to water, in Ankh-Morpork. Being drunk was only the start of its problems. (GG)
Human nature, the Patrician always said, was a marvellous thing. Once you understood where its levers were. (GG)
The Patrician didn’t believe in unnecessary cruelty.*
*While being bang alongside the idea of necessary cruelty, of course. (GG)
People in Scoone Avenue had old money, which was supposed to be much better than new money, although Captain Vimes had never had enough of either to spot the difference. People in Scoone Avevue had their own personal bodyguards. People in Scoone Avenue were said to be so aloof they wouldn't even talk to the gods. This was a slight slander. They would talk to gods, if they were well-bred gods of decent family. (GG)
... laws governing the animal kingdom did not apply to the Librarian. On the other hand, the Librarian himself was never very interested in obeying the laws governing the human kingdom, either. He was one of those little anomalies you have to build around. (GG)
The Librarian rolled his eyes. It was strange, he felt, that so-called intelligent dogs, horses and dolphins never had any difficulty indicating to humans the vital news of the moment e.g., that the three children were lost in the cave, or the train was about to take the line leading to the bridge that had been washed away or similar, while he, only a handful of chromosomes away from wearing a vest, found it difficult to persuade the average human to come out in the rain. (GG)
Vimes knew that the barbarian hublander folk had legends about great chain-mailed, armour-bra’d, carthorse-riding maidens who swooped down on battlefields and carried off dead warriors on their cropper to a glorious roistering afterlife, while singing in a pleasing mezzo-soprano. Lady Ramkin could have been one of them. She could have led them. She could have carried off a battalion. (GG)
He couldn’t help remembering how much he’d wanted a puppy when he was a little boy. Mind you, they’d been starving – anything with meat on it would have done. (GG)
That's Nature for you in a nutshell. Always dealing off the bottom of the pack.
No wonder they called her a mother ... (GG)
‘A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch,’ Carrot drew himself up proudly, ‘because someone’s taken a book? You think that’s worse than murder?’
The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like ‘What’s so bad about genocide?’ (GG)
The Librarian indicated with some surprisingly economical gestures that most wizards would not find their own bottom with both hands. (GG)
The Guild of Firefighters had been outlawed by the Patrician the previous year after many complaints. The point was that, if you bought a contract from the Guild, your house would be protected against fire. Unfortunately, the general Ankh-Morpork ethos quickly came to the fore and fire fighters would tend to go to prospective clients’ houses in groups, making loud comments like ‘Very inflammable looking place, this’ and ‘Probably go up like a firework with just one carelessly-dropped match, know what I mean?’ (GG)
Apparently having a fire-breathing lizard focusing interestedly on one’s nether regions from a distance of a few feet can upset the strongest constitution. (GG)
It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it any more you tell them another lie and tell them they're progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they'll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable. Amazing. (GG)
Flourishing, of course, was important. It didn't have much to do with wielding. Wielding a sword, the Supreme Grand Master considered, was simply the messy business of dynastic surgery. It was just a matter of cut and thrust. Whereas a King had to flourish one. It had to catch the light in just the right way, leaving watchers in no doubt that here was Destiny's chosen. (GG)
... what the boy seemed most interested in was mirrors. Probably hero material .... (GG)
It was the usual Ankh-Morpork mob in times of crisis; half of them were here to complain, a quarter of them were here to watch the other half, and the remainder were here to rob, importune or sell hot dogs to the rest. (GG)
... Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, purveyor of absolutely anything that could be sold hurriedly from an open suitcase in a busy street and was guaranteed to have fallen off the back of an oxcart. (GG)
What he couldn’t do with fifty thousand dollars…
Vimes thought about this for a while and then thought of the things he could do with fifty thousand dollars. There were so many more of them, for a start. (GG)
Ankh-Morpork did not have many hospitals. All the Guilds maintained their own sanitariums, and there were a few public ones run by the odder religious organizations, like the Balancing Monks, but by and large medical assistance was nonexistent and people had to die inefficiently, without the aid of doctors. It was generally thought that the existence of cures encouraged slackness and was in any case probably against Nature’s way. (GG)
‘Disgusting, really, her livin’ in a room like this. She’s got pots of money, sarge says, she’s got no call livin’ in ordinary rooms. What’s the good of not wanting to be poor if the rich are allowed to go round livin’ in ordinary rooms?’ (GG)
It always amazed Vimes how Nobby got along with practically everyone. It must, he’d decided, have something to do with the common denominator. In the entire world of mathematics there could be no denominator as common as Nobby. (GG)
...when the Patrician was unhappy, he became very democratic. He found intricate and painful ways of spreading that unhappiness as far as possible. (GG)
For a moment the rank felt as though they had just returned from single-handedly conquering a distant province. They felt, in fact, tremendously bucked-up, which was how Lady Ramkin would almost certainly have put it and which was definitely several letters of the alphabet away from how they normally felt. (GG)
'I should have thought you'd be all for kings.'
'Some of them were fearful oiks, you know,' she said airily. 'Wives all over the place, and chopping people's heads off, fighting pointless wars, eating with their knife, chucking half-eaten chicken legs over their shoulders, that sort of thing. Not our sort of people at all.' (GG)
…a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. (GG)
'Do you think picking someone up by their ankles and bouncing their head on the floor comes under the heading of Striking a Superior Officer?' (GG)
The people of Ankh-Morpork had a straightforward, no-nonsense approach to entertainment, and while they were looking forward to seeing a dragon slain, they’d be happy to settle instead for seeing someone being baked alive in his own armor. (GG)
Say what you like about the people of Ankh-Morpork, they had always been staunchly independent, yielding to no man their right to rob, defraud, embezzle and murder on an equal basis. This seemed absolute right, to Vimes’s way of thinking. There was no difference at all between the richest man and the poorest beggar, apart from the fact that the former had lots of money, food, power, fine clothes, and good health. But at least he wasn’t any better. (GG)
People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library. (GG)
Books bend space and time. One reason the owners of those aforesaid little rambling, poky second-hand bookshops always seem slightly unearthly is that many of them really are, having strayed into this world after taking a wrong turning in their own bookshops in worlds where it is considered commendable business practice to wear carpet slippers all the time and open your shop only when you feel like it. You stray into L-space at your peril. (GG)
‘Might have just been an innocent bystander, sir,’ said Carrot
‘What, in Ankh-Morpork?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘We should have grabbed him, then, just for the rarity value.’ (GG)
‘Fine Art. It’s just men paintin’ pictures of young wimmin in the nudd. The altogether,’ explained Colon the connoisseur. ‘The caretaker told me. Some of them don’t even have any paint on their brushes, you know.’ (GG)
The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality. (GG)
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn’t as cynical as real life. (GG)
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. City law said that only condemned criminals should be used, but that was all right because in most of the religions refusing to volunteer for sacrifice was an offence punishable by death. (GG)
The Librarian knuckled out into the Library of the here and now. Every hair on his body bristled with rage.
He pushed open the door and swung out into the stricken city.
Someone out there was about to find that their worst nightmare was a maddened Librarian.
With a badge. (GG)
Colon didn’t reply. I wish Captain Vimes were here, he thought. He wouldn’t have known what to do either, but he’s got a much better vocabulary to be baffled in. (GG)
‘Never build a dungeon you wouldn’t be happy to spend the night in yourself,’ said the Patrician, laying out the food on the cloth. ‘The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that.’ (GG)
‘Never trust any ruler who puts his faith in tunnels and bunkers and escape routes. The chances are that his heart isn’t in the job.’ (GG)
‘“Every bottle matured for up to seven minutes”,’ quoted Colon. ‘“Ha’ a drop afore ye go”, it says on the label. Damn right, too. I had a drop once, and I went all day.’ (GG)
Vimes lowered the ape, who wisely didn’t make an issue of it because a man angry enough to lift 300 lbs of orangutan without noticing is a man with too much on his mind. (GG)
Officers had a tried and tested way of solving problems like this. It was called a sergeant. (GG)
‘I believe you find life such a problem because you think that 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.’ (GG)
‘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 loathsomeness 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.’ (GG)
‘…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 over-thrown 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.’ (GG)
A couple of women were moving purposefully among the boxes. Ladies, rather. They were far too untidy to be mere women. No ordinary women would have dreamed of looking so scruffy; you need the complete self-confidence that comes with knowing who your great-great-great-great-grandfather was before you could wear clothes like that. (GG)
That was how you got to be a power in the land, he thought. You never cared a toss about whatever anyone else thought and you were never, ever, uncertain about anything. (GG)
She smiled at him.
And then it arose and struck Vimes that, in her own special category, she was quite beautiful; this was the category of all the women, in his entire life, who had ever thought he was worth smiling at. She couldn’t do worse, but then, he couldn’t do better. So maybe it balanced out. She wasn’t getting any younger but then, who was? And she had style and money and common-sense and self-assurance and all the things that he didn’t, and she had opened her heart, and if you let her she could engulf you; the woman was a city.
And eventually, under siege, you did what Ankh-Morpork had always done – unbar the gates, let the conquerors in, and make them your own. (GG)
…it was possible to believe that this wonderful state of affairs might continue.
And even if it didn’t, then there were the memories to get them through. Of running, and people getting out of the way. Of the looks on the faces of the horrible palace guard. Of, when all the thieves and heroes and gods had failed, of being there. Of nearly doing things nearly right. (GG)
Real kings had shiny swords, obviously. Except, except, except maybe your real real kings of, like, days of yore, he would have a sword that didn’t sparkle one bit but was bloody efficient at cutting things. (GG)
