Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8)

by Terry Pratchett

Under night’s damp cloak assassins assassinated, thieves thieved, hussies hustled.

“Happens all the time. You read about it. Skions, they’re called. They go lurking around in the distant wildernesses for ages, handing down the secret sword and birthmark and so forth from generation to generation. Then just when the old kingdom needs them, they turn up and turf out any usurpers that happen to be around. And then there’s general rejoicing.”

And now Ankh-Morpork was before him. It was a little disappointing. He’d expected high white towers rearing over the landscape, and flags. Ankh-Morpork didn’t rear. Rather, it sort of skulked, clinging to the soil as if afraid someone might steal it.

The Patrician didn’t believe in unnecessary cruelty.1 He did not believe in pointless revenge. But he was a great believer in the need for things to be sorted out.

Once you’ve ruled out the impossible then whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. The problem lay in working out what was impossible, of course. That was the trick, all right.

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

Although the passage of years had turned the post of Captain of the Watch into something rather shabby, it still meant that Vimes was entitled to a seat at official occasions. The pecking order had moved it, though, so that now he was in the lowest tier on the rickety bleachers between the Master of the Fellowship of Beggars and the head of the Teachers’ Guild.

“I wonder what’s the difference between ordinary councillors and privy councillors?” wondered the merchant aloud. The assassin scowled at him. “I think,” he said, “it is because you’re expected to eat shit.”

“I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people,” said the man. “You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.”

darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no. I’m sorry if this offends you,” he added, patting the captain’s shoulder, “but you fellows really need us.”

You see, the only thing the good people are good at is overthrowing the bad people. And you’re good at that, I’ll grant you. But the trouble is that it’s the only thing you’re good at. One day it’s the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it’s everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no one’s been taking out the trash. Because the bad people know how to plan. It’s part of the specification, you might say. Every evil tyrant has a plan to rule the world. The good people don’t seem to have the knack.”