"A cap-brim sewn with sharpened pennies, sir. An ever-present help in times of trouble." "Ye gods, man! You could put someone's eye out with something like that." "With care, sir, yes" -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % "/Who tipped you off?/" "I just do zer pictures, Commander," said Otto, looking up with a hurt expression. "Anyvay, I couldn't tell you even if I knew, because of zer Freedom of the Press." "Freedom to pour oil on a flame, d'you mean?" Vimes demanded. "Zat's freedom for you," said Otto. "No-vun said it vas /nice/." -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % "Do come this hway. I am given to understand that the modern hWatch can learn a lot just by looking at the place where a thing was, is that not so?" "Like, that it's gone?" said Nobby. "Oh /years/. We're /good/ at that". -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % "/Freedom/? If it hwas ever on the market, it hwould probableah fetch thirty thousand dollars," said Sir Reynold. "For a bit of wood with a nail in it?" said Fred Colon. "Who did it?" "After he viewed /Don't Talk to Me About Mondays!/, Lord Vetinari graciousleah had Ms. Pouter nailed to the stake by her ear," said Stitched. "However, she did manage to pull free during the afternoon." -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % "War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?" he said. "Dunno, Sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?" "Absol--well, okay." "Defending yourself against a totalitarian agressor?" "All right, I'll grant you that, but--" "Saving civilization from a horde of--" "It doesn't do any good in the long run is what I'm saying, Nobby, if you'd listen for five seconds together," said Fred Colon sharply. "Yeah, but in the long run, what does, Sarge?" -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % "Full carts congesting in the street, Vimes, is a sign of progress," he declared. "Only in the figurative sense, sir," said Vimes. -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % It really was an /awful/ garment, that pullover. It had a queasy zigzag pattern, in many strange unhappy colours. It looked like something knitted as a present by a colourblind aunt, the sort of thing you wouldn't dare throw away in case the garbage collectors laughed at you and kicked your trash cans over. -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % He glanced down at his paperwork. "Salacia Deloresista Amanita Trigestatra Zeldana Malifee..." He paused, turned over several pages, and said, "I think we can skip some of these, but they end 'von Humpeding." She is fifty-one, /but/," he added quickly, before Vimes could seize on this revelation, "that is no age at all for a vampire. Oh, and she'd prefer to be known simply as Sally." -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % It creaked open. Any door opened by an Igor would creak. It was a knack. -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % 'A.E. Pessimal will be quite acceptable, Your Grace,' said the inspector. 'The /A/ standing for--?' Vimes said, taking his eyes off the board for a moment. 'Just /A/, Your Grace,' said A.E. Pessimal patiently. 'A.E. Pessimal.' 'You mean you weren't named, you were /initialed/?' 'Just so, Your Grace,' said the little man calmly. 'What do your friends call you?' A.E. Pessimal looked as though there was one major assumption in that sentence that he did not understand, so Vimes took a small amount of pity on him. -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % Vimes unfolded the copy of the /Times/ that Cheery had left on his desk. He always read it at work, to catch up on the news that Willikins had thought it unsafe to hear whilst shaving. -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % 'I still can't get the smell out of my clothes, sir.' 'There are people living hundreds of miles away who can't, I reckon. What did we do with the bloody things in the end?' 'I put them in No. 4 evidence locker and left the key in the lock,' said Cheery. 'But Nobby Nobbs always steals anything that--' Vimes began. 'That's right, sir!' said Cheery happily. 'I haven't seen them for weeks.' -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % The important thing is not to shout at this point, Vimes told himself. Do not... what do they call it... go postal? Treat this as a learning exercise. Find out why the world is not as you thought it was. Assemble the facts, digest the information, consider the implications. /Then/ go postal. But with precision. -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % "How about a game of Splong!(TM), specially devised for the Mark Five?" pleaded the imp. "I have the bats right here. No? Perhaps you would prefer the ever-popular 'Guess My Weight in Pigs'? Or I could whistle one of your favourite tunes? My iHUM(TM) function enables me to remember up to one thousand five hundred of your all-time--" -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % Dwarfs as a whole weren't happy about newspapers, regarding such news as a lover of fine grapes would regard raisins. They got their news from other dwarfs, to ensure that it was new and fresh and full of personality, and no doubt it grew all kinds of extras in the telling. -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % Vimes had never got on with any game much more complex than darts. Chess in particular had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the kings lounged about doing nothing that always got to him; if only the pawns united, maybe talked the rooks around, the whole board could've been a republic in a dozen moves. -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % If you're not with us, you're against us. Huh. If you're not an apple, you're a banana... -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % Vimes had got around to a Clean Desk policy. It was a Clean Floor strategy that eluded him at the moment. -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % 'Cogito ergo sum, Insert Name Here. I exist, therefore I do sums!' -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % He sighed. "Boys," he said, "if dere was a Ph.D. in bein' fick, youse wouldn't be able to find a pencil." -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % Now the troll looked directly at Vimes. "If it was, I would have foun' out by now. I bin askin' questions." "So are we." "I bin askin' questions more louder," said the troll. "I get lotsa answers. Sometimes I am gettin' answers to questions I ain't even asked yet." -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % No excuses. He promised himself that. /No excuses/. No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses. -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % He didn't want to be doing dis, but he'd fallen into bad company. He often fell into bad company, he reflected, although sometimes he had to look all day to find it, 'cos Brick was a loser's loser. -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % "Hold it!" Sally thrust both hands in front of her in a gesture of peace. "There's something we'd better sort before this goes any further!" "Yeah?" "Yes. We're both wearing nothing, we're standing in what, you may have noticed, is increasingly turning into mud, and we're squaring up to fight. Okay. But there's something missing, yes?" "And that is...?" "A paying audience? We could make a /fortune/." -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % The plain fact was that while Tawneee had a body that every other woman should hate her for, she compounded the insult by actually being very likable. This was because she had the self-esteem of a caterpillar and, as you found out after any kind of conversation with her, about the same amount of brain. Perhaps it all balanced out, perhaps some kindly god had said to her: "Sorry, kid, you are going to be thicker than a yard of lard, but the good news is, that's not going to matter." And she had a stomach made of iron, too. Angua found herself wondering how many hopeful men had died trying to drink her under the table. Alcohol didn't seem to go to her brain at all. Maybe it couldn't find it. -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % "That? Oh, it's the jerk syndrome." Angua remembered who she was talking to, and added: "Er... dwarfs probably don't have that. It means... sometimes a woman is so beautiful that any man with half a brain isn't going to /think/ of asking her out, okay? Because it's /obvious/ that she's far too grand for the likes of him. Are you with me?" "I think so." "Well, that's Tawneee. And, for the purposes of this explanation, Nobby has not got half a brain. He's so used to women saying no when he asks them out that he's not afraid of being blown off. So he asks her, because he figures, why not? And /she/, who by now thinks there's something wrong with her, is so grateful she says okay." -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % Rascal's handwriting was what might have been achieved by a spider on a trampoline during an earthquake. -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" % "Oh, yes. The fighting doesn't start until Koom Valley Day. That's tomorrow." "Damn, I lost track. Will it affect us down here?" Bashfullsson coughed politely. "I don't think so, Commander. This area is too dangerous to fight in." "Well, yes, I can see it would be terrible if anyone got hurt," said Vimes, climbing over a long heap of rotting timber. "That would spoil the day for everyone." -- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!" %