#guards!guards!

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.

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.

They avoided one anothers faces, for fear of what they might see mirrored there. Each man thought: one of the others is bound to say something soon, some protest, and then I'll murmur agreement, not actually SAY anything, I'm not as stupid as that, but definitely murmur very firmly, so that the others will be in no doubt that I thoroughly disapprove, because at a time like this it behooves all decent men to nearly stand up and be almost heard... But no one said anything. The cowards, each man thought.

The reason cliches become cliches is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.

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

He remembered hearing once about a man who, locked up in a cell for years, trained little birds and created a sort of freedom.