'Commander Vimes says, when life hands you a mess of spaghetti, just keep pulling until you find the meatball.' (MM)
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... 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) Now this he understood. He was never at ease with politics, where good and bad were just, apparently, two ways of looking at the same thing or, at least, were described like that by the people who were on the side Vimes thought of as ‘bad’.
It was all too complicated and, where it was complicated, it meant that someone was trying to fool you. But on the street, in hot pursuit, it was all so clear. Someone was going to be still standing at the end of the chase, and all you had to concentrate on was making sure it was you. (FE) And Sam Vimes ran. He tore off his cloak and whirled away his plumed hat, and he ran and ran.
There would be trouble later on. People would ask questions. But that was later on – for now, gloriously uncomplicated and wonderfully clean, and hopefully with never an end, under a clear sky, in a world untarnished…there was only the chase. (J) This always happens in any police chase anywhere. A heavily-laden lorry will always pull out of a side alley in front of the pursuit.
If vehicles aren’t involved, then it’ll be a man with a rack of garments. Or two men with a large sheet of glass. There’s probably some kind of secret society behind all this. (FC) Talking to the Watch was like tap-dancing on a landslide. If you were nimble you could stay upright, but you couldn’t steer and there were no brakes and you just knew that it was going to end in a certain amount of fuss. (MM)
When people are trying to kill you, it means you’re doing something right. It was a rule Sam had lived by. (Th)
And the trouble with clues, as Mister Vimes always said, was that they were so easy to make. You could walk around with a pocket full of the bloody things. (Th)
'A copper doesn’t keep flapping his lip. He doesn’t let on what he knows. He doesn’t say what he’s thinking. No. He watches and listens and he learns and he bides his time. His mind works like mad but his face is a blank. Until he’s ready.' (NW)
'... it’s even easier to be a crook when no one knows you’re a crook, haha. But coppering depends on people believing you’re a copper.' (NW)
Policemen, after a few years, found it hard enough to believe in people, let alone anyone they couldn’t see. (NW)
'Tell me,’ said Blind Io. ‘Is there a god of policemen?’
‘No, sir,’ said Carrot. ‘Coppers would be far too suspicious of anyone calling themselves a god of policemen to believe in one.' (LH) It wasn’t proper police work, Vimes considered, unless you were doing something that someone somewhere would much rather you weren’t doing. (J)
Only crimes could take place in darkness. Punishment had to be done in the light. That was the job of a good
watchman, Carrot always said. To light a candle in the dark. (FC) Every real copper knew you didn’t go around looking for Clues so that you could find out Who Done It. No, you started out with a pretty good idea of Who Done It. That way, you knew what Clues to look for. (FC)
'You have the mind of a true policeman, Vimes.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ ‘Really? Was it a compliment?' (FC) And he’s mastered policing as it is practised by the majority of forces in the universe, which is, basically, screaming angrily at people until they give in. (FC)
The real world was far too real to leave neat little hints. It was full of too many things. It wasn’t by eliminating the impossible that you got at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities. (FC)
People would probably say they had lived blameless lives.
But Vimes was a policeman. No one lived a completely blameless life. It might be just possible, by lying very still in a cellar somewhere, to get through a day without committing a crime. But only just. And, even then, you were probably guilty of loitering. (FC) Detritus was particularly good when it came to asking questions. He had three basic ones. They were the direct (‘Did you do it?’), the persistent (‘Are you sure it wasn’t you what done it?’) and the subtle (‘It was you what done it, wasn’t it?’). Although they were not the most cunning questions ever devised, Detritus’ talent was to go on patiently asking them for hours on end, until he got the right answer, which was generally something like: ‘Yes! Yes! I did it! I did it! Now please tell me what it was I did!' (FC)
Detritus, despite a room-temperature IQ, made a good copper and a damn good sergeant. He had that special type of stupidity that was hard to fool. (FC)
Nanny Ogg was basically a law-abiding person when she had no reason to break the law, and therefore had that kind of person’s attitude to law-enforcement officers, which was one of deep and permanent distrust. (Ma)
When you were a Watchman, you were a Watchman all the time, which was a bit of a bargain for the city since it only paid you to be a Watchman for ten hours of every day. (MA)
Beating people up in little rooms…he knew where that led. And if you did it for a good reason, you’d do it for a bad one. You couldn’t say ‘We’re the good guys’ and do bad-guy things. (Th)
He kept the cell keys in a tin box in the bottom drawer of his desk, a long way out of reach of any stick, hand, dog, cunningly thrown belt or trained Klatchian monkey spider*.
*Making Fred Colon possibly unique in the annals of jail history. (Th) |
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