The Fifth Elephant quotes page 2
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He moved by inches, waving his arms ahead of him like a man practising a very slow martial art against the darkness.



One thing that Vimes did not do was shout ‘Help! Help!’ He was in a cell. Someone had put him in a cell. It was reasonable to assume, therefore, that whoever had done this wasn’t interested in his opinions.



The Marquis of Fantailler […] wrote a set of rules for what he termed ‘the noble art of fisticuffs’, which mostly consisted of a list places where people weren’t allowed to hit him. […] The last words of a surprisingly large number of people were ‘Stuff the bloody Marquis of Fantailler– ’

[It's probably a tie for first place with "You can't kill me because I've got magic arrgh."]



There should be people around, shouldn’t there? Vimes was hazy on rural issues, but weren’t there supposed to be charcoal burners, woodcutters and… he tried to think… little girls taking goodies to granny? The stories Vimes had learned as a kid suggested that all forests were full of bustle, activity and the occasional scream.



There is a saying: it won’t get better if you picket.



‘Colon, Colon, Colon! Out! Out! Out!’ shouted Reg Shoe happily, waving his placard.
‘That doesn’t sound right, Reg,’ said Nobby. ‘Sounds like surgery.’



‘Father played by the rules. If the runner was bright and nimble he got four hundred crowns and Father had him to dinner at the castle.’
‘If he lost, then your father had him for dinner out in the woods.’
‘Thank you for reminding me.’
‘I was trying not to be nice.’
‘You may have an undiscovered natural talent,’ said Angua.



'I've been a copper in Ankh-Morpork, remember. City motto: You May Not Get Killed.'



He’d been running for half an hour. Well, for twenty-five minutes, really. The other five had been spent limping, wheezing, clutching at his chest and wondering how you knew if you were having a heart attack.



'Have you come here to ravish us?' she said.
'Madam! I'm being pursued by werewolves!'
The three looked at one another. [...]
'Er, vill that take you all day?' said one of the women.



'Didn't I see you last month? I was chasing Bigger-than-Small-Dave Dave along Peach Pie Street and I fell off that ledge?'

[It was mentioned in Hogfather that the number of Daves in Ankh-Morpork's underworld was reaching saturation levels and making it hard to find nicknames, hence Medium Dave. The problem has evidently become worse since then!]



'Are you Death?'
IT'S THE SCYTHE, ISN'T IT? PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE.



‘I’m going to die?’
POSSIBLY.
‘Possibly? You turn up when people are possibly going to die?’
OH, YES. IT'S QUITE THE NEW THING. IT'S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.
‘What’s that?’
I'M NOT SURE.



Death was sitting on a higher branch of the tree.
‘Are you following me or what?’
ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE WORDS 'DEATH WAS HIS CONSTANT COMPANION'?



‘Things are different here, sir,’ said Carrot. ‘It wasn’t until ten years ago that they replaced trial by ordeal here with trial by lawyer, and that was only because they found that lawyers were nastier.’



There was only one thought buzzing around Fred Colon’s head.
Mister Vimes is going to go completely bursar. He’s going to go totally Librarian-poo.



‘However,’ said Detritus, ‘if you can find der man dat kicked me inna rocks, I should be happy to give him a flick around der earhole. I know which one it was. He’s der one walkin’ wid der limp.’



She couldn’t bring herself to like Serafine, and this was shocking, because Lady Sybil even liked Nobby Nobbs, and that took breeding.



[Lady Sybil] sat on the bed and stared at the wall until the shouting started, and when the shouting started she knew Sam was alive and well, because only Sam made people that angry.



A large wolf came around the corner, holding a bone in its mouth. It did not look as if it was expecting her, and it certainly wasn’t expecting the iron bar.
‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry,’ said Sybil automatically as it folded up onto the cobbles.



Out of habit, [Gaspode] walked over to the nearest tree, and, wincing, raised a leg.
EXCUSE ME.
A busy, reflective silence followed.
‘That was not a good thing you just did,’ said Gaspode.



A door was rolled open. A couple of what Vimes thought of as the heavy dwarfs stepped through and gave everyone the official, professional look that said that for your comfort and convenience we have decided not to kill you right at this very moment.



‘Poor old Gaspode went over too.’
‘How? What was he doing?’
‘Er, you could say he had our lad’s full attention.’

[Cuius testiculos habes…]



People like that shouldn’t be allowed to simply die their way out of things.



‘You know what I mean? Idiots who’ll go on fighting long after they should stop. The only way to put ‘em down is to put ‘em out.’
‘I think I recognise the type, yes,’ said Lady Sybil, with an irony that failed to register with Sam Vimes until some days later.



Vimes leapt off the bed. ‘Lock the door after me and push the bed against it!’ He paused for a moment in the doorway. ‘Without straining yourself!’ he added, and ran for the stairs.



There were a lot of things he could say. ‘Son of a bitch!’ would have been a good one. Or he could say, ‘Welcome to civilization!’ He could have said, ‘Laugh this one off!’ He might have said, ‘Fetch!’
But he didn’t, because, if he had said any of those things then he’d have known that what he had just done was murder.



At times like this, teetotalism bit down hard.



‘Classically, we give rings at this time,’ said the King. ‘Between ourselves, many dwarfs consider this a bit… well, bath salts, see.’



‘And I’m afraid I know where the blame ultimately lies,’ Carrot went on, still apparently engrossed in the spectacle of a man sweeping the Opera House steps.

[I wonder if this is Walter Plinge?]
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