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Ninety per cent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact.

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 162)

‘The riot was over the price of bread, I understand.’ No. The protest was over the price of bread, said Vimes’s inner voice. The riot was what happens when you have panicking people trapped between idiots on horseback and other idiots shouting ‘yeah, right!’ and trying to push forward, and the whole thing in the charge of a fool advised by a maniac with a steel rule.

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 149)

That was always the dream, wasn’t it? ‘I wish I’d known then what I know now’? But when you got older you found out that you now wasn’t you then. You then was a twerp. You then was what you had to be to start out on the rocky road of becoming you now, and one of the rocky patches on that road was being a twerp.

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 135)

Swing, though, started in the wrong place. He didn’t look around, and watch and learn, and then say, ‘This is how people are, how do we deal with it?’ No, he sat and thought: ‘This is how the people ought to be, how do we change them?’ And that was a good enough thought for a priest but not for a copper, because Swing’s patient, pedantic way of operating had turned policing on its head.

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 112)

Like petty criminals everywhere, the watchmen prided themselves that there were some depths to which they would not sink. There had to be some things below you, even if it was only mudworms.

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 104)

‘Y’know,’ he said, ‘it’s very hard to talk quantum using a language originally designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is.

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 73)

The garden didn’t get much proper light. Gardens like this never did. You got second-hand light once the richer folk in the taller buildings had finished with it.

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 64)

‘Shirts so worn you could see daylight through ’em and trousers as shiny as glass,’ said Vimes. ‘And by the end of the week half the stuff was in the pawn shop.’ ‘That’s right,’ said Sweeper. ‘You’d pawn your clothes in the pawn shop, but you’d never buy clothes from the pawn shop, ’cos there were Standards, right?’ Vimes nodded. When you got right down to the bottom of the ladder the rungs were very close together

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 63)

Privilege, which just means private law. Two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it.

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 46)

‘When Mister Safety Catch Is Not On, Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend,’ recited Detritus, saluting.

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 325)

Grasp the nettle firmly and all that. He had, as a child, grasped nettles firmly, and had sometimes had a hand the size of a small pig.

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 262)