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

by Terry Pratchett

“Without poo, you would go off bang!”

Instantly Young Sam threw his arms around as much of her as he could encompass and shouted, “Mushrooms shouldn’t cry!”

Oh dear, you of all people must recognize a substitution when you’re possessed by it? It’s the opposite of a superstition: it’s real even if you don’t believe in it. My mother taught me that; she was a goblin.”

it’s true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they’re doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved.

good people have no business being so bad. Goodness is about what you do. Not what you pray to.

It’s what is known as the dreadful logic of necessity. I’m well versed in the logistics of survival situations.”

One way or another he was on the chase. Who you were chasing could wait. The chasing was the thing.

Anger at himself and whoever it was who had punctured his holiday. But it was worrying: he had wanted something to happen and now it had. Somebody was dead. Sometimes you had to take a look at yourself and then look away.

“If you want to change a whole people, then you start with the girls. It stands to reason: they learn faster, and they pass on what they learn to their children. I suppose you’re wondering why we were trekking up here with all the sacks?”

the other males don’t worry about what the girls get up to, so they slip fruit and veg into their stews, saying they’re magical, and so they have children who survive and thus we change the world one meal at a time.

He thought: it could just as well have been her head grinning on the pub wall! Someone is going to burn!

There it was again: a language of little boxes, opening and shutting as required.

What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge?

once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers.

while the music rushed in and, for a moment upon the world, lifted all hearts and forgave all sins—not having its work cut out in the case of Young Sam, a part of Vimes managed to reflect, but doing a sterling and heavyweight job on his father.

I’ve just told a goblin not to be frightened of my son because he loves her and the world has turned upside-down and all sins are forgiven, except possibly mine.

the jurisdiction of a good man extends to the end of the world—though

the worst thing you can do is nothing.

what good is a snooker room without smoke twisting among the lights and turning the air a desolate blue, the color of dead hopes and lost chances?

she used language I haven’t heard on the lips of a woman since my old mother passed away, gods bless her soul, if they can find it.

“I want to get them all, Willikins. It’s no good slamming up some local thug.”

what does it matter once the ball has dropped?”

if you’re going to get caught between nobs, maybe you’d better pick the biggest one to be on the side of.”

“Do you know what that little speech you made was called, Mr. Feeney?” “Don’t know, sir, it’s just what I think.” “It was called redemption, Mr. Feeney. Hold on to it.”

I’m a scallywag, not a damn murderer!”

And you can find someone like this dangerous clown in nearly every neighborhood,

No swagger, no whining, just gratitude for mercies received and fervently hoped for.

He was a scallywag, a chancer, a ruthless fighter and a dangerous driver of bargains over the speed limit. Since all this was a bit of a mouthful, he was referred to as a successful businessman, since that more or less amounted to the same thing.

Harry was probably not honest, but if there was dishonesty it happened at times and places that did not concern the Watch, and faded from the memory of all concerned just as soon as the ripples of the splash had died away and the tide had gone out.

I pay them half what I pay humans and I reckon they do twice as much work, and do it better.

They say one hand washes the other, but I bet that when it came to old Harry King it had to scrub.”

and so one at a time we all become human—human werewolves, human dwarfs, human trolls . . .the melting pot melts in one direction only,

well, I know Ankh-Morpork is a melting pot of a city, but don’t you think it’s rather sad when people come here and forget their ancestry?” “Yes,” said Angua, not looking at him. “It is.”

Cheery was aware that Commander Vimes didn’t like the phrase “The innocent have nothing to fear,” believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like “The innocent have nothing to fear”;

the Summoning Dark could tell me everything I need to know, and that is the truth. But would the truth that it told me be the truth, and how would I know that?

Darkness has always been my friend, but I cannot let it be my master, though sooner or later I will have to take an oath, and if I lie, me, the chief policeman, then what am I? How could I ever again rebuke a copper for looking the other way?

It’s a target-rich environment, and the trouble with a target-rich environment is that it is useless if you don’t know which target you have to aim at.

He held in front of him a scroll with a red wax seal affixed, the kind of thing believed to make a document official—or at least expensive and difficult to understand, which, in fact, amounts to the same thing.

once the goblins are vermin, then the poor are vermin, and the dwarfs are vermin, and the trolls are vermin. She wasn’t vermin and she pleaded not to die.”

I am not above the law, but I stand right underneath it, and I hold it up!

justice, not convenience, will be served.”

he was a criminal, but anyway that’s nearly like being a copper!”

folks around here tend to do what they’re told, although maybe some like doing what they’re told more than others.”

people seemed quite easy about having their rights and liberties taken away by those they looked up to, but somehow a space on the perch was a slap in the face, and treated as such.

“Land, I quite like land, it’s one of my favorite things for standing on. But land, and landlord, and law, well . . .A man might get quite confused, yes? Especially in the presence of a pretty good fee? And it’s quite easy for people to be jolly decent people when they can afford to hire thoroughly un-decent people, people that don’t even need orders, just a nod and a wink.”

“I congratulate you on your careful ignorance,

you are a bloody stupid lawyer if you haven’t realized that a bunch of landowners cannot decide all by themselves that anything they want to do is the law.

realizing that he might not only have bitten off more than he could chew, but also more than he could lift.

They were a damn nuisance, but even Feegles would be happy to agree that so were they themselves. And being a nuisance is not something you should die of.

I’m too damn scared to tell Feeney that I’m too damn scared.