“Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.”

“Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insect-buzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. On...”

“Sybils female forebears had valiantly backed up their husbands as distant embassies were besieged, had given birth on a camel or in the shade of a stricken elephant, had handed around the little go...”

“Would a minute have mattered? No, probably not, although his young son appeared to have a very accurate internal clock. Possibly even 2 minutes would be okay. Three minutes, even. You could go to f...”

“I believe the term is eminent domain.Ah, yes. That means theft by the government,”

“War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?" he said. "Dunno, Sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?""Absolwell, okay." "Defending yourself against a totalitarian aggressor?""All right, I'll grant you that, but""...”

“It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?”

“Men marched away, Vimes. And men marched back. How glorious the battles would have been that they never had to fight!”

“The world rides through space on the back of a turtle. This is one of the great ancient world myths, found wherever men and turtles were gathered together; the four elephants were an Indo-European ...”

“Sibyl, what do you want?I want to live, the Sibyl said, and her voice rang rich and full. I want to keep on living forever and watching heroes and fools and knights go up and down, into the world a...”

“When God is driven to the periphery of the public square, the human spiritual capacity longs for exercise, and it often finds it in the suspension of disbelief and activity of the imagination that ...”

“When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it.”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”