You did what you were told or you didn't get paid, and if things went wrong it wasn't your problem. It was the fault of whatever idiot has accepted this message for sending in the first place. No one cared about you, and everyone at headquarters was an idiot. It wasn't your fault, no one listened to you. Headquarters had even started an Employee of the Month scheme to show how much they cared. That was how much they didn't care.

If there were such a thing as an inter-city thieving contest, Ankh-Morpork would bring home the trophy and probably everyone’s wallets.

I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people.

She was a beefy young woman and, whatever piece of music she was playing, it was definitely losing.

There are times when phrases such as 'totally astonished' just don't do the job. I am of course delighted and honoured and, needless to say, flabbergasted.

The Librarian considered matters for a while. So…a dwarf and a troll. He preferred both species to humans. For one thing, neither of them were great readers. The Librarian was, of course, very much in favor of reading in general, but readers in particular got on his nerves. There was something, well, sacrilegious about the way they kept taking books off the shelves and wearing out the words by reading them. He liked people who loved and respected books, and the best way to do that, in the Librarian’s opinion, was to leave them on the shelves where Nature intended them to be.

When in doubt, choose to live.