It may be amongst the words in the head...

Rumour is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything. It does not need doors and windows -- sometimes it doesn't even need people. It can exist free and wild, running from ear to ear without ever touching lips.

'The tincture of the night began to suffuse the soup of the afternoon.'
Lord Vetinari considered the sentence, and found it good. He liked 'tincture' particularly. Tincture. Tincture. It was a distinguished word, and pleasantly countered the flatness of 'soup'. The soup of the afternoon. Yes. In which may well be found the croutons of teatime.
Lord Vetinari is not well.

Vimes pounded through the fog after the fleeing figure. It wasn't quite so fast as him, despite the twinges in his legs and the one or two warning stabs from his left knee, but whenever he came close to it some muffled pedestrian got in the way, or a cart pulled out of a cross-street.
[ footnote: This always happens in any police chase anywhere. A heavily laden lorry will always pull out of a side alley in front of the pursuit. If vehicles aren't involved, then it'll be a man with a rack of garments. Or two men with a large sheet of glass. There's probably a secret society behind all this.]

'WEE MAD' ARTHUR For those little things that get you down Rats *FREE* Misc: 1p per ten tails Moles: 1/2p each Warsps: 50p per nest. Hornets 20p extra Cockroaches and similar by appointment Small Fees * BIG JOBS

He [Vimes] looked at the page again and, after still more though, wrote: 'Golems aren't alive. But the think they are alive. What do alive things do? --> Ans: Breathe, eat, crap.' He paused, staring out at the fog, and then wrote very carefully: 'And make more things.'

He loaded his crossbow and lit a match.
'Right,' he said. 'We've done it the modern way, now let's try policing like grandfather used to do it. It's time to--'
'Prod buttock, sir?' said Carrot hurriedly.
'Close,' said Vimes, taking a deep drag and blowing out a smoke ring, 'but no cigar.'

"I don't blow everything up, sir. Some just melts."
Being interviewed for the job of forensic alchemist with the Watch.

...He hated the very idea of the world being divided into the shaved and the shavers. Or those who wore the shiny boots and those who cleaned the mud off them. Every time he saw Willikins the butler fold his, Vimes's, clothes, he suppressed a terrible urge to kick the butler's shiny backside as an affront to the dignity of man.
Vimes on the class structure.

And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions.

I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. I TURN UP ONLY ONCE.

"I run a wholesome restaurant. My tables are so clean you could eat your dinner off them."

There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell.

At the end of Nonesuch Street was a gibbet, where wrongdoers -- or, at least, people found guilty of wrongdoing -- had been hung to twist gently in the wind as examples of just retribution and, as the elements took their toll, basic anatomy as well.

It was Carrot who'd suggested to the Patrician that hardened criminals should be given the chance to ‘serve the community’ by redecorating the homes of the elderly, lending a new terror to old age and, given Ankh-Morpork's crime rate, leading to at least one old lady having her front room wallpapered so many times in six months that now she could only get into it sideways.

"Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk."
Words of wisdom indeed.

"In all, I've had seventeen demands for your badge. Some want parts of your body attached. Why did you have to upset everybody?"
"I suppose its a knack, sir."
The relationship between Lord Vetinari and Commander Vimes is a complex one.

You never ever volunteered. Not even if a sergeant stood there and said, ‘We need someone to drink alcohol, bottles of, and make love, passionate, to women, for the use of.’ There was always a snag. If a choir of angels asked for volunteers for Paradise to step forward, Nobby knew enough to take one smart pace to the rear.
The gospel according to Nobby.

"Today Is A Good Day For Someone Else To Die!"
Dwarvish battle-cry.

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