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Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1) QUOTES

Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1) QUOTES

1 " 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. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

2 " Life could be horrible in the wrong trouser of time. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

3 " A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

4 " Down there - he said - are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any inequity. 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. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

5 " 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. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

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

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

7 " Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

8 " Perhaps the magic would last, perhaps it wouldn't. But then again, what does? "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

9 " Sergeant Colon owed thirty years of happy marriage to the fact that Mrs. Colon worked all day and Sargent Colon worked all night. They communicated by means of notes. They had three grown-up children, all born, Vimes had assumed, as a result of extremely persuasive handwriting. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

10 " 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. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

11 " ... a metaphor ... is like lying but more decorative. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

12 " But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

13 " You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape – the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes – we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

14 " 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. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

15 " Once again he was aware of eyes staring fixedly at him. He glanced sideways into the long, pointed face of Goodboy Bindle Featherstone, rearing up in a pose best described as The Last Puppy in the Shop.

To his astonishment, he found himself reaching over and scratching it behind its ears, or at least behind the two spiky things at the sides of its head which were presumably its ears. It responded with a strange noise that sounded like a complicated blockage in a brewery. He took his hand away hurriedly.

“It's all right,” said Lady Ramkin. “It's his stomachs rumbling. That means he likes you.”

To his amazement, Vimes found that he was rather pleased about this. As far as he could recall, nothing in his life before had thought him worth a burp. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

16 " But all this business about kings and lords, it's against basic human dignity. We're all born equal. It makes me sick.'
'Never heard you talk like this before, Frederick,' said Nobby.
'It's Sergeant Colon to you, Nobby. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

17 " 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 "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

18 " Where do you think they've gone?' he said.
'Where what?' said Lady Ramkin, temporarily halted.
'The dragons. You know. Errol and his wi - female.'
'Oh, somewhere isolated and rocky, I should imagine,' said Lady Ramkin. 'Favourite country for dragons.'
'But it - she's a magical animal,' said Vimes. 'What'll happen when the magic goes away?'
Lady Ramkin gave him a shy smile.
'Most people seem to manage,' she said.
She reached across the table and touched his hand. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

19 " All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

20 " Several times he had to flatten himself against the shelves as a thesaurus thundered by. He waited patiently as a herd of Critters crawled past, grazing on the contents of the choicer books and leaving behind them piles of small slim volumes of literary criticism. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)