The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

keep on adjusting his mind in case he overshot.
    *
    Gaspode wasn’t sure of his own ancestry. There was some terrier, and a touch of spaniel, and probably someone’s leg, and an awful lot of mongrel.
    *

    ‘I believe you were an alcoholic, Sir Samuel.’ ‘No,’ said Vimes. ‘I was a drunk. You have to be richer than I was to be an alcoholic’

    ‘Everyone’s heard of Commander Vimes. I mean no offence, of course, but we were a little surprised when the Patrician said that you would be coming. We were expecting one of the more … experienced … diplomats.’
    ‘Oh, I can hand around the thin cucumber sandwiches like anything,’ said Vimes. ‘And if you want little golden balls of chocolate piled up in a heap, I’m your man.’
    *
    ‘Igors heal very fast,’ said Lady Sybil.
    ‘They’d have to.’
    ‘Mister Skimmer said they’re very gifted surgeons, Sam.’
    ‘Except cosmetically, perhaps.’
    *
    ‘This stuff … this stuff is spying. I wondered how Vetinari always seems to know so much!’
    ‘Did you think it came to him in dreams, dear?’
    ‘But there’s loads of details here … I didn’t know we did this sort of thing!’
    ‘You use spies all the time, dear,’ said Sybil.
    ‘I do not!’
    ‘Well, what about people like Foul Ole Ron and No Way Jose and Cumbling Michael?’
    ‘That is not spying, that is not spying! That’s just “information received”. We couldn’t do the job if we didn’t know what’s happening on the street!’
    ‘Well, perhaps Havelock just thinks in terms of … a bigger street, dear.’
    *
    Vimes had once discussed the Ephebian idea of ‘democracy’ with Carrot, and had been rather interested in the idea that everyone had a vote until he found out that while he, Vimes, would have a vote, there was no way in the rules that anyone could prevent Nobby Nobbs from having one as well. Vimes could see the flaw there straight away.
    *
    The Marquis of Fantailler got into many fights in his youth, most of them as a result of being known as the Marquis of Fantailler, and wrote a set of rules for what he termed ‘the noble art of fisticuffs’, which mostly consisted of a list of places where people weren’t allowed to hit him. Many people were impressed with his work and later stood with noble chest out-thrust and fists balled in a spirit of manly aggression against people who hadn’t read the Marquis’s book but did know how to knock people senseless with a chair. The last words of a surprisingly large number of people were ‘Stuff the bloody Marquis of Fantailler—’
    *
    Vimes is being pursued through an unfriendly landscape.
    So, what were his options? Well, he could stay in the tree and die, or run for it and die. Of the two, dying in one piece seemed better.
    Y OU’RE DOING VERY WELL FOR A MAN OF YOUR AGE.
    Death was sitting on a higher branch of the tree.
    ‘Are you following me or what?’
    A RE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE WORDS ‘D EATH WAS HIS CONSTANT COMPANION’?

    Lady Sybil wasn’t a good cook.
    She’d never been taught proper cookery; at her school it had always been assumed that other people would be doing the cooking and that in any case it would be for fifty people using at least four types of fork.

 
    W ILLIAM just wants to get at the truth.
    Unfortunately, everyone else wants to get at William. And it’s only the third edition…
    William de Worde is the accidental editor of the Discworld’s first newspaper. Now he must cope with the traditional perils of a journalist’s life - people who want him dead, a recovering vampire with a suicidal fascination for flash photography, some more people who want him dead in a different way and, worst of all, the man who keeps begging him to publish pictures of his humorously shaped potatoes.
    The rumour spread through the city like wildfire (which had quite often spread through Ankh-Morpork since its citizens had learned the words ‘fire insurance’).
    *
    Selling hot sausages from a tray was by way of being the ground state of Dibbler’s existence, from which he constantly sought to extricate himself and back to which he constantly returned when his latest venture went all runny. Which was a shame, because Dibbler was an extremely good hot sausage salesman. He had to be, given the nature of his sausages.
    *
    As for Mr Pin and Mr Tulip, all that need be known about them at this point is that they are the kind of people who call you ‘friend’. People like that aren’t friendly.

    ‘You