Night Watch quotes page 2
page 1 page 2
No man drinking a non-alcoholic chocolate beverage had ever been the centre of so much attention.



‘And he didn’t have anything in his pockets. Nothing. Not so much as a used hanky.’
‘Very odd, sarge,’ said Sam loyally.
‘Especially since I was expecting a piece of paper saying something like “I am definitely a member of a revolutionary cadre, trust me on this,"’ said Vimes, looking carefully at the corpse.



‘Anyone notice anything about his bow?’
‘It’s the new Bolsover A7,’ said Fred Colon. ‘Not a bad bow, sarge. Not an Assassin’s weapon, though.’

[As mentioned in gg, Colon was an excellent archer in his youth. His knowledge here – and his skill later on – are nice continuity touches.]



‘How do you know he’s dead? I realise I may regret asking that question.’
‘He’s got a broken neck from falling off a roof and I reckon he fell off because he got a steel crossbow bolt in his brain.’
‘Ah. That sounds like dead, if you want my medical opinion. Did you do it?’
‘No!’
‘Well, you’re a busy man, sergeant. You can’t be everywhere.’



His movements could be called cat-like, except that he did not stop to spray urine up against things.



‘No! Please! I’ll tell you whatever you want to know!’ the man yelled.
‘Really?’ said Vimes. ‘What’s the orbital velocity of the moon?’
‘What?’
‘Oh, you’d like something simpler?’



‘And now you write down at the end: I, Gerald Leastways, currently staying at the Young Men’s Pagan Association, am making this statement of my own free will and not under duress. And then you sign it. Or else.’



A voice said ‘- to change the dominant episteme-’ before the doors breathed shut.

[I had to look this word up: according to my dictionary ‘epistemics’ is ‘the scientific study of knowledge, its acquisition and its communication.’]



Oh dear, here we go again, thought Vimes. Why did I wait until I was married to become strangely attractive to powerful women? Why didn’t it happen to me when I was sixteen? I could have done with it then.



‘The world does not deal well with those who don’t pick a side.’
‘I like the middle,’ said Vimes.
‘That gives you two enemies.’



‘What does he smell like?’ […]
‘Bottom of a baboon’s cage, sarge.’

[They’re talking about Nobby, and this isn’t the first time he’s been likened to a baboon. When he visits the Heralds in foc, he is asked: ‘Are you the baboon? We’ve had one on order for…’]



‘All right, attack me,’ [Vimes] said. […]
‘You’re just grinning and standing there, sarge,’ said Sam. ‘I know I’m going to get a hiding, ’cos you haven’t got a sword and you’re grinning.’

[Remember Rule One? Young Sam seems to have picked it up somewhere…]



Lance-constable Vimes crossed the line […] and Leggy Gaskin and […] Curry.

[Gaskin got a few mentions in gg as the watchman who died just before Carrot joined the Watch – it is after his funeral that Vimes lays drunk in the gutter at the beginning of that book. Curry is mentioned in maa when Angua finds Vimes’ notebook where he records the money he gives to watchmen’s widows and orphans.]



‘Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come round again. That’s why they’re called revolutions.’



‘Two-stripe copper already I pay. One dollar, one month, no trouble!’
‘Corporal Quirke,’ muttered Vimes. ‘You don’t have to pay coppers, Mr Soon. We’re here for your protection.’
Despite his barely basic grasp of the language, Mr Soon’s expression suggested very clearly that the three-stripe, one-crown copper in front of him had dropped in from the planet Idiot.



A voice shouted, ‘Death to the Fascist Oppressors!’
This time the argument was more frantic. He heard someone say ‘oh, all right’, and then ‘Death to the Fascist Oppressors, Present Company Excepted! There, is everyone happy now?’



Havelock Vetinari knocked politely on the window of the little office just inside the Assassins’ Guild main gate.
The duty porter raised the hatch.
‘Signing out, Mr Maroon,’ said the Assassin.

[In Oxford and Cambridge universities, the porters are very often retired policemen, so I’d like to think that this could just be the Sergeant Maroon mentioned briefly in maa. Maybe.]



‘What are you intending to do about us being murdered in our beds?’ she demanded.
‘Well, it’s not four o’ clock yet, ma’am, but if you’ll let me know when you want to retire –’



‘That’s why we’ve come for the prisoners in the cells.’
‘Yeah? On whose authority?’
Vimes swung his crossbow up. ‘Mr Burleigh and Mr Stronginthearm,’ he said, and grinned.
The two guards exchanged glances. ‘Who the hell are they?’ said one.
There was a moment of silence followed by Vimes saying, out of the corner of his mouth: ‘Lance-constable Vimes?’
‘Yessir?’
‘What make are these crossbows?’
‘Er…Hines Brothers, sir. They’re Mark Threes.’
‘Not Burleigh and Stronginthearm?’
‘Never heard of them, sir.’
Damn. Five years too early, thought Vimes. And it was such a good line, too.
‘Let me put it another way,’ he said to the guards. ‘Give me any trouble and I will shoot you in the head.’



If you were an Assassin, being killed in the pursuit of your duty was all part of the job, albeit the last part.



‘I mean, how long have I known you, Fred?’ [said Vimes]
‘Two or three days, sir.’
‘Er…right. Yeah. Of course. Seems longer.’



‘Yes, sarge, but you do bop people over the head.’
‘Interesting point, lance-constable. Logical and well made, too, in a clear tone of voice bordering on the bloody cheeky. But there’s a big difference.’
‘And what’s that, sarge?’
‘You’ll find out,’ said Vimes. And privately thought: the answer is, It’s Me Doing It.



‘It’s called Victory Stew, sergeant,’ said Dibbler. ‘Tuppence a bowl or I’ll cut my throat, eh?’
‘Close enough.’



‘You’ll have to excuse the lance-constable, Mr Dibbler,’ said Vimes. ‘The poor lad was brought up not to eat stew that winks at him.’

[This was first mentioned in Jingo, when Vimes is offered the sheep’s eyeball by the D’regs and says his mum taught him not to eat anything that can wink back.]



‘Huh, I have my own […],’ sniffed Nobby, and pulled [a handkerchief] out of his pocket. In fact, he pulled several dozen […]. They were tangled together like a conjuror’s flags-of-all-nations, and dragged with them several purses.

[This, along with the earlier description of Nobby wearing an oversize evening dress jacket and a top hat, and being an expert pickpocket, confirms him to be rather like the Artful Dodger from Oliver Twist – or at least from the film musical Oliver!]



He took out the cigar case and stared at the inscription […], almost willing it to disappear.

[Reminds me of the Back to the Future films, where images in photographs change by fading in and out when the past is changed.]



‘Doctor Lawn presents his compliments and says how come you haven’t beaten anyone up yet?’ she said […]. ‘He says he’s got three tables scrubbed, two buckets of tar on the boil, six ladies rolling bandages and all he’s had to deal with so far is a nose-bleed. You’ve let him down, he says.’
‘Tell him ha, ha, ha,’ said Vimes.



It wasn’t exactly rocket magic, in any case.

[Remember Ponder’s shirt in tlh – ‘Actually I am a rocket wizard’.]



‘We’ve got a doctor here. Very good. I’ve yet to hear screaming.’



‘He’s a devious devil, sir,’ said Knock, as if this was a character flaw in a copper.



‘There’s nothing left to bribe me with. I’ve got more than I deserve. The Watch is working well. We don’t even need a new bloody dartboard –’

[Another mention for the traditional dartboard, which the Watch is given in gg, maa and foc and which also gets a mention in j.]
page 1 page 2
Night Watch quotes page 2