Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8)

by Terry Pratchett

There was no point in arguing with Sybil, because even if you thought that you’d won, it would turn out, by some magic unavailable to husbands, that you had, in fact, been totally misinformed.

Sybil considered it her wifely duty to see to it that her husband lived forever, and was convinced that this happy state of affairs could be achieved by feeding him bowel-scouring nuts and grains and yogurt, which to Vimes’s mind was a type of cheese that wasn’t trying hard enough.

The man looked up at Vimes and gave him a nod, the basic nod which is understood everywhere as meaning “I see you, you see me, it’s up to you what happens next,” although some publicans can put an inflection on a nod which also manages to convey the information that there might just be a two-foot length of lead piping under the counter should the party of the second part want to start anything, as it were.

“I’m Sam Vimes, young man, so don’t try that chop sally stuff on me, understand?”

That just goes to show that you never know, although what it is we never know I suspect we’ll never know.”

It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers.

I think the penalty for doing that is not just being hanged, but also to let you bounce up and down for a bit afterward.

“What is normal? Normal is yesterday and last week and last month taken together.”

“Generally, we say that they sing like a canary,” said Vimes, turning toward the stubby little building. “Yes, sir, but this is a rural police station, sir, and I know my birds, sir, and he sang like a nightingale, right enough! A beautiful watery cadence, sir, second only to the trill of the robin in my opinion, possibly occasioned by his being really, really scared, sir.

Can I say that the goblins seem very attached to your Corporal Nobbs? They treat him as one of their own, in fact, and he seems to be very fond of Shine of the Rainbow, as she is of him. You may be interested to know that the goblin name for him is Breaking Wind?”