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

by Terry Pratchett

Predators respect other predators, do they not? They may perhaps even respect the prey: the lion may lie down with the lamb, even if only the lion is likely to get up again, but the lion will not lie down with the rat.

Let it be said here that those who live their lives where life hangs by less than a thread understand the dreadful algebra of necessity, which has no mercy

I have no particular objection to people taking substances that make them feel better, or more contented or, for that matter, see little dancing purple fairies—or even their god if it comes to that. It’s their brain, after all, and society can have no claim on it, providing they’re not operating heavy machinery at the time.

It is well known that any drive to reduce paperwork only results in extra paperwork.

One thing he knew about the country was that it squelched underfoot.

To be in the countryside you had to be permanently on the defensive; quite the opposite of the city.

“and would we have him any other way? He has won a little battle and a man who can win little battles is well set up to win big ones.”

one intrinsically feels that while there are things by nature unavailable to the common man, there are also things not to be allowed to the rich and powerful.”

Everyone should occasionally break the law in some small and delightful way, Drumknott. It’s good for the hygiene of the brain.”

Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?”

She had a special smile for these occasions; it was warm and friendly and carved out of rock. You had to stop discussing politics or you would run right into it, causing no damage to anything but yourself.

the stately home, presumably so called, Vimes thought, because it was about the size of the average state.

Willikins was definitely not a policeman, because most policemen don’t know how to glass up somebody with a broken bottle without hurting their hands or how to make weapons of limited but specific destruction out of common kitchen utensils.

Vimes trusted Willikins. He didn’t trust many people. Too many years as a copper made you rather discriminating in that respect.

That wasn’t supposed to be what coppers were for, although in reality, of course it was what coppers were for. It was about privilege,

the motto said, “What We Have We Keep.” You could call it . . .a hint.

I would be the laughingstock of the League of Gentlemen’s Gentlemen if I was so impertinent as to have a drink with my employer. It would be getting ideas above my station, sir.”

we all have our funny little ways, although some of Willikins’ would not be funny if he was angry with you in a dark alley;

“Oh, they’re skimming stuff off the top, sir, but nothing more than usual in my experience. Everyone sneaks something, it’s the perk of the job and the way of the world.”

You could fish in the River Ankh, provided you took care not to catch anything.

Now, Vimes stuck his head under an enormous pillow and tried not to hear the tremendous and disturbing lack of noise whose absence could wake a man up when he had learned to ignore a carefully timed sound every night for years.

Vimes was a great fan of pillows when away from his own bed. Not for him one or even two sad little bags of feathers as an afterthought to the bed—no! He liked pillows to burrow into and turn into some kind of soft fortress, leaving one hole for the oxygen supply.

Oh yes, he recalled, that was another bloody thing about the country. It started too damn early.

yogurt, which to Vimes’s mind was a type of cheese that wasn’t trying hard enough.

I believe that you intend to make an indelicate remark?”

to an experienced husband it was a command, all the more powerful because it was made delicately.

They never had any truck with philosophical conundra.* They were aristocrats, you see? Aristocrats don’t notice philosophical conundra. They just ignore them. Philosophy includes contemplating the possibility that you might be wrong, sir, and a real aristocrat knows that he is always right. It’s not vanity, you understand, it’s built-in absolute certainty. They may sometimes be as mad as a hatful of spoons, but they are always definitely and certainly mad.”

“I think Sam Vimes is at his best when he’s confident that he’s Sam Vimes.

“The country isn’t as subtle as the city, commander. They like big and straightforward things here, and Black Jack was as big and as straight as you could hope for. That’s why they liked him, because they knew where they stood, even if he was about to fall down.

“I don’t know what to make of me either,”

How does she find out all this stuff?” “As a matter of fact, commander, I don’t think she does, at least as an actual fact. She just knows you. Perhaps you should think of it as amiable suspicion.

“Well, it’s true, dear. A lot of farming is about manure.”

But Old Stoneface was just a point in time, a kind of true myth. There wasn’t a line between him and Sam Vimes, only an aching gulf.

He wouldn’t grow up worrying about what he was, because he would know, and the influence of his mother might just outweigh the enormous drag factor of having Samuel Vimes as a father.

You need confidence to do that, and having a bunch of (apparently) loony but interesting ancestors could only impress the man in the street, and Vimes knew a lot of streets, and a lot of men.

I’ll look at daffodils to see if they fill me with joy, or whatever it is they’re supposed to do,

Mostly you were part of the scenery, until the scream, the tinkle of broken glass and the sound of felonious footsteps brought you into focus. But here everything was watching him.

He was the stranger, the interloper, not wanted here.

Of course the world sometimes needed blowing up, just so long as it didn’t happen where Vimes was drinking.

There was no “what” to follow, and the lack of it was somehow an emphasis.

Lord Rust tells me there is nothing here for me. Oh dear, I’d better find out what it is, what?

Gentility is all very well, but practicality has its uses.

“Well, it can’t be a difficult job, given that all the words have probably been invented already, so there’s a saving in time right there, considering that you simply have to put them together in a different order.”

People think that the country is where you can go to hide out. It ain’t so. In the city you’re a face in the crowd. In the country people will stare at you until you’re out of sight, just for the entertainment value.

I wouldn’t trust me one little inch, sir. I knows a bad one when I sees them. I have a mirror.”

It was like a peasants’ revolt, without the revolt and with a very polite class of peasant.

“Do you think it makes me look dashing? Am I a dashing kind of person, would you say?” The birds started singing from a low branch of the tree. “I’d put you down as more the sprinting sort, sir,”

everything is a weapon if you choose to think of it as such,

you should never react to any comment or situation until you had decided exactly what you were going to do. This had the dual attraction of preventing you from saying or doing the wrong thing while at the same time making other people extremely nervous.

for him any form of literature was in every sense a closed book.