Carpe Jugulum

"But you read a lot of books, I'm thinking. Hard to have faith, ain't it, when you've read too many books?"

-- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum)

"Nac mac Feegle wha hae!"

-- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum)

In Ghat they believe in vampire watermelons, although folklore is silent about what they believe about vampire watermelons. Possibly they suck back.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum)

Perdita thought that not obeying rules was somehow cool. Agnes thought that rules like "Don't fall into this huge pit of spikes" were there for a purpose.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum)

Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all the time and handed on the fight to their descendants.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum)

"I name you ... Esmeralda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre!"

-- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum)

There are many rhymes about magpies, but none of them is very reliable because they are not the ones the magpies know themselves.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum)

One or two of the old barrows had been exposed over the years, their huge stones attracting their own folklore. If you left your unshod horse at one of them overnight and placed sixpence on the stone, in the morning the sixpence would be gone and you'd never see your horse again, either...

-- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum)

Hodgesaargh was an original storyteller and quite good in a very specific way. If he'd had to recount the saga of the Tsortean War, for example, it would have been in terms of the birds observed, every cormorant noted, every pelican listed, every battlefield raven taxonomically placed, no tern unturned. Some men in armour would have been involved at some stage, but only because the ravens were perching on them.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum)

Fewer birds could sit more meekly than the Lancre wowhawk, or lappet-faced worrier, a carnivore permanently on the lookout for the vegetarian option.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum)

He was trying to find some help in the ancient military journals of General Tacticus, whose intelligent campaigning had been so successful that he'd lent his very name to the detailed prosecution of martial endeavour, and had actually found a section headed What to Do If One Army Occupies a Well-fortified and Superior Ground and the Other Does Not, but since the first sentence read "Endeavour to be the one inside" he'd rather lost heart.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum)

- "Remember -- that which does not kill us can only make us stronger."
- "And that which does kill us leaves us dead!"

-- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum)