They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they wanted to.
This book is dedicated to those fine men.
(Terry Pratchett in the Dedication)
This is where the dragons went.
They lie...
Not dead, not asleep. Not waiting, because waiting implies expectation. Possibly the word we're looking for here is...
...dormant.
[incipit]
A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
(Page 11)
They were myths and they were real. Both a wave and a particle.
(Page 27)
Thunder rolled...
It is said that the gods play games with the lives of men. But what games, and why, and the identities of the actual pawns, and what the game is, and what the rules are - who knows?
Best not to speculate.
Thunder rolled..
It rolled a six.
(Page 32)
Finding that you are dead is mitigated by also finding that there really is a you who can find you dead.
(Page 51)
Thank you for coming to see me. Don't hesitate to leave.
The Patrician
(Page 59)
There are many horrible sights in the multiverse. Somehow, though, to a soul attuned to the subtle rhythms of a library, there are few worse sights than a hole where a book ought to be.
Someone had stolen a book.
(Page 111)
Ankh-Morpork! Brawling city of a hundred thousand souls! And, as the Patrician privately observed, ten times that number of actual people.
(Page 113)
A group of swamp dragons was a slump or an embarrassment.
(Page 130)
'You summoned the Watch [...] because someone's taken a book? You think that's worse than murder?'
The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like 'What's so bad about genocide?'
(Page 135)
People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library.
(Page 222-223)
There it was again, a subtle wrongness about things that you couldn't quite put your finger on because your finger was too scared.
(Page 244)
There was practically nothing the dragon could do to people that they had not, sooner or later, tried on one another, often with enthusiasm.
(Page 305)
The people united can never be ignited!
(Page 319)
Someone out there was about to find that their worst nightmare was a maddened Librarian.
(Page 323)
Never build a dungeon you wouldn't be happy to spend the night in yourself. The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that.
the Patrician
(Page 343)
Heroes get kingdoms and princesses, and they take regular exercise, and when they smile the light glints off their teeth, The bastards.
(Page 365)
'Who did that?'
The voice lashed out like a whip.
The crowd went quiet.
Sybil Ramkin scrambled up on the wreckage, eyes afire, and glared furiously at the mob.
'I said,' she said, 'who did that? If the person who did it does not own up I shall be extremely angry! Shame on you all!'
She had their full attention. Several people holding stones and things let them drop quietly to the ground.
(Page 384)
His head buzzed and resonated manically with those of all city guards everywhere, all the pavement-pounding meatheads in the multiverse who had ever, just occasionally, tried to do what was Right.
(Page 391)
Ladies, rather. They were far too untidy to be mere women. No ordinary women would have dreamed of looking so scruffy.
(Page 414)
Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
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