Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3)

by Terry Pratchett

You take a bunch of people who don’t seem any different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem.”

we appear to have zombies in the lower crypts. Dreadful things. A lot of high-ranking Borogravian military men were interred down there over the centuries, apparently.” “Really? What are they doing now?” Clarence raised his eyebrows. “Lurching, sir, I think. Groaning. Zombie things. Something seems to have stirred them up.” “Us, probably,” said Vimes. He got up, strode across the room, and pulled open the big heavy door. “Reg!” he yelled. After a moment, another watchman appeared and saluted. He was gray-faced and Clarence couldn’t help noticing when the man saluted that the hand and fingers were held together with stitching. “Have you met Constable Shoe, Clarence?” said Vimes cheerfully. “One of my staff. Been dead for more than thirty years and loves every minute of it, eh, Reg?” “Right, Mister Vimes,” said Reg, grinning and revealing a lot of brown teeth. “Some fellow countrymen of yours down in the cellar, Reg,” said Vimes. “Oh, dear. Lurching, are they?” “’Fraid so, Reg.” “I shall go and have a word with them,” said Reg. He saluted again and marched out, with a hint of a lurch.

“Thith beer,” said Igor, on her right, “tastes of horthe pith.” Polly stood back. Even in a bar like this, that was killing talk. “Oh, you’d know, would you?” said the barman, looming over the boy. “Drunk horse piss, have you?” “Yeth,” said Igor.

Ankh-Morpork is a godless city—” “I thought it had more than three hundred places of worship?” said Maladict. Strappi stared at him in a rage that was incoherent until he managed to touch bottom again. “Ankh-Morpork is a godawful city,” he said.

After about an hour, when rain was drumming on the canvas, Carborundum said: “Okay, den, I fink I’ve worked it out. If people are groophar stupid, then we’ll fight for groophar stupidity, ’cos it’s our stupidity. And dat’s good, yeah?” Several of the squad sat up in the darkness, amazed at this. “I realize I ought to know these things, but what does groophar mean?” said the voice of Maladict in the damp darkness. “Ah, well . . . when, right, a daddy troll an’ a mummy troll—”

you are not the only one watching the world, other people are also people, while you watch them they watch you, and they think about you while you think about them. The world isn’t just about you.

But there is an old milit’ry say: better me firing it at you than you firing it at me, you bastard.

She’d been a kitchen maid and now she was subjecting the Book to critical analysis and talking to a religious icon. That sort of thing led to friction.

The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.

you only thought the world would be better if it was run by women if you didn’t actually know many w...

There was an old, very old Borogravian song with more Zs and Vs in it than any lowlander could pronounce. It was called “Plogviehze!” It meant “The Sun Has Risen! Let’s Make War!” You needed a special kind of history to get all that in one word.

Fine old tradition, men dressing up as gels. In the Sixth Form, the chaps used to do it for a jape all the time.” He paused for a moment, and added thoughtfully, “Especially Wrigglesworth, for some reason . . .” He shook his head as if dislodging a thought and went on:

The enemy wasn’t men, or women, or the old, or even the dead. It was just bleedin’ stupid people, who came in all varieties. And no one had the right to be stupid.

*It’s hard to be an ornithologist and walk through a wood when all around you the world is shouting: “Bugger off, this is my bush! Aargh, the nest thief! Have sex with me, I can make my chest big and red!”