It’s quite easy to accidentally overhear people talking downstairs if you hold an upturned glass to the floorboards and accidentally put your ear to it.

Actors, said Granny, witheringly. As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more.

Vimes's lack of interest in other people's children was limitless.

Vimes stalked gloomily through the crowded streets, feeling like the only pickled onion in a fruit salad.

History tends to change people who think they're changing it.

Last hopeless chances have got to work. Nothing makes sense otherwise. You might as well not be alive.

...'I thought the rule was that all monks were shaved.' 'Oh, Soto says he is bald under the hair,'said Lu Tze. 'He says the hair is a separate creature that just happens to live on him.