Men at Arms

If the Creator had said, "Let there be light" in Ankh-Morpork, he'd have gotten no further because of all the people saying "What colour?"

-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

From the back, Vetinari looked like a carnivorous flamingo.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

Cuddy had only been a guard for a few days, but already he had absorbed one important and basic fact: it is almost impossible for anyone to be in a street without breaking the law.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

The Battle of Koom Valley is the only one known to history where both sides ambushed each other.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

Carrot was two metres tall but he'd been brought up as a dwarf, and then further up as a human.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

"Young Edward thinks that there is no lake of blood too big to wade through to put a rightful king on a throne, no deed too base in defence of a crown. A romantic, in fact."

-- Lord Rust describing Edward d'Eath (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

The Ramkins were more highly bred than a hilltop bakery, whereas Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

He was said to have the body of a twenty-five year old, although no one knew where he kept it.

-- The Life and Times of Corporal Nobbs (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

"Pride is all very well, but a sausage is a sausage."

-- Gaspode, of course (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

The river Ankh is probably the only river in the universe on which the investigators can chalk the outline of the corpse.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

The Alchemist's Guild is opposite the Gambler's Guild. Usually. Sometimes it's above it, or below it, or falling in bits around it.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

Sham Harga had run a succesful eatery for many years by always smiling, never extending credit, and realizing that most of his customers wanted meals properly balanced between the four food groups: sugar, starch, grease and burnt crunchy bits.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

The Patrician relaxed, in a way which only then drew gentle attention to the foregoing moment of tension.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

Being a werewolf meant having the dexterity and jaw power to instantly rip out a man's jugular. It was a trick of her father's that had always annoyed her mother, especially when he did it just before meals.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

The door was still ajar, but there was a tentative tap on it which said, in a kind of metaphorical morse code, that the tapper could see very well that Carrot was in his room with a scantily clad woman and was trying to knock without actually being heard.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

"It's got three keyboards and a hundred extra knobs, including twelve with '?' on them."

-- The Unseen University Organ, as designed by B. S. Johnson (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

- BIG FIDO?
- "Yes?"
- HEEL.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

The Librarian of Unseen University had unilaterally decided to aid comprehension by producing an Orang-utan/Human Dictionary. He'd been working on it for three months. It wasn't easy. He'd got as far as "Oook".

-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

- "It could be a torture chamber or a dungeon or a hideous pit or anything!"
- "It's just a student's bedroom, sergeant."
- "You see?"

-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

The maze was so small that people got lost looking for it.

-- Bloody Stupid Johnson at his finest (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)