More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Lord Vetinari looked attentive, because he’d always found that listening keenly to people tended to put them off. And at meetings like this, when he was advised by the leaders of the city, he listened with great care because what people said was what they wanted him to hear. He paid a lot of attention to the spaces outside the words, though. That’s where the things were that they hoped he didn’t know and didn’t want him to find out.
“Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum of moo. And I am afraid to say that these days all I get is moo.”
Sergeant Colon had had a broad education. He’d been to the School of My Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands to Reason, and was now a postgraduate student at the University of What Some Bloke In the Pub Told Me.
“There’s al-gebra. That’s like sums with letters. For . . . for people whose brains aren’t clever enough for numbers, see?”
It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.
“It is always useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country,” he read. “This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.”
No one likes being told it’s their lucky day. That sort of thing does not bode well. When someone tells you it’s your lucky day, something bad is about to happen.
Odd thing, ain’t it . . . you meet people one at a time, they seem decent, they got brains that work, and then they get together and you hear the voice of the people. And it snarls.”
“Nothing wrong with seaweed,” said Jackson. “It’s full of nourishing . . . seaweed. ’s got iron in it. Good for you, iron.” “Why don’t we boil an anchor, then?” “None of your lip, son.”
‘Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life.’
is impossible to ride a running camel without concentrating on your liver and kidneys, in the hope that they won’t be pounded out of your body.
