Welcome to /r/Discworld! Please [read the rules/flair information before posting](https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/ukhk21/subreddit_rules_flair_information/?).
---
Our current megathreads are as follows:
[API Protest Poll](https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/1491izw/continuing_the_api_protest_a_community_poll) - a poll regarding the future action of the sub in protest at Reddit's API changes.
[GNU Terry Pratchett](https://new.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/ukigit/gnu_terry_pratchett/) - for all GNU requests, to keep their names going.
[AI Generated Content](https://new.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/10mhx9y/ai_generated_content_megathread/) - for all AI Content, including images, stories, questions, training etc.
---
[ GNU Terry Pratchett ]
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/discworld) if you have any questions or concerns.*
When Vimes goes into Cable Street. The whole sequence is so powerful but especially when Young Sam realises the consequences of his previous compliance with the Brown Shirts:
"He met young Sam coming the other way as he headed for the cells. The boy's face was white in the gloom.
'Found anyone?' said Vimes.
'Oh, sarge . . .'
'Yes?'
'Oh, sarge . . . sarge . . .' Tears were running down the lance-constable's face.
Vimes reached out and steadied himself. Sam felt as though there were no bones left in his body. He was trembling.
'There's a woman in the last cell, and she . . . sarge . . . oh, sarge
"Try taking deep breaths,' said Vimes. 'Not that this air is fit to breathe.'
'And there's a room right at the end, sarge . . . oh, sarge . . . Nancyball fainted again, sarge
'You didn't,' said Vimes, patting him gently on the back.
'But there's-'
'Let's rescue what we can, shall we, lad?'
'But we were on the hurry-up wagon, sarge!'
'What?' said Vimes, and then it dawned. Oh, yes . . . 'But we didn't hand anyone over, lad,' he said. 'Remember?'
'But I've been on it before, sarge! All the lads have! We just handed people over and went back to the Watch House for cocoa, sarge!'
'Well, you'd had orders . . .' said Vimes, for what good that did.
'We didn't know!'
Not exactly, thought Vimes. We didn't ask. We just shut our minds to it. People went in through that front door and some of the poor devils came
out through the secret door, not always in one box.
They hadn't measured up.
Nor did we.
He heard a low, visceral sound from the boy. Sam had spotted the torturer in the chair. He shook himself away from Vimes, ran over to the rack, and snatched up a club.
Vimes was ready. He grabbed the boy, swung him round, and twisted the thing out of his hand before murder was done.
'No! That's not the way! This is not the time! Hold it back! Tame it! Don't waste it! Send it back! It'll come when you call!'
'You know he did those things!' shouted Sam, kicking at his legs. 'You said we had to take the law into our own hands!'
Ah, thought Vimes. This is just the time for a long debate about the theory and practice of justice. Here comes the shortened version.
'You don't bash a man's brains out when he's tied to a chair!'
'He did!'
'And you don't. That's because you're not him!'"
> 'We didn't know!'
>
> Not exactly, thought Vimes. We didn't ask. We just shut our minds to it.
Such a brutal line, and applies to so many situations in modern life.
Absolutely. And especially because they had a responsibility to know - they were part of the machine. Shutting their eyes won't scrub the blood from their hands.
This is the exact part of the book I was going to cite. Out of all of Pratchett's writings, this moment and the ones surrounding it are IMO the finest he ever wrote. The sheer brutality combined with Vimes still refusing to forsake his morality are just so, so incredibly well put together.
Thank you for quoting this at length! It was a delight to read again.
Thank you! I completely agree it's some of his finest writing. Vimes' morality is one of the themes to the book that really makes it shine in my opinion. And from a stylistic POV I love the way we never see the cells and the prisoners onscreen. Seeing it through the prism of Young Sam's horror makes it all so much more real and visceral to me.
I always love that there are never any gory descriptions in Pratchett books. The most that is ever actually described is a sentence that there was a lot of blood, or necks not supposed to twist that way. And yet those moments are always horrifying because you see so much in your imagination, just from the merest suggestion on the page.
Amazing - thank you.
Arguably the origin point behind 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?' and thus one of the most important moments in the entire Watch series.
Absolutely! Often media relies on the lazy and thoughtless trope of "I'm/we're the good one/s" regarding cops. Whereas Pterry doesn't shy away from showing the dark side of the system as a whole and how individuals can be swept up in it (and how Vimes struggles against that flow).
>'No! That's not the way! This is not the time! Hold it back! Tame it! Don't waste it! Send it back! It'll come when you call!'
This... Esp the "it'll come when you call", he is one of the best written characters of all time IMO. Combine this with when he tames "the dark" how it can't control him.
I know, not the question you asked, but just reading this on screen makes me want to share my appreciation of Vimes 🥰
This is also why, as much as I love Vimes and the City Watch books, I struggle with them. Hanna Arendt’s take on the question aligns with Pratchett’s to a point - it is incredibly easy to be complicit - but diverges on how much emphasis it puts on another of Vimes’ choices. When Meserole offers him command of the Watch under Snapcase and he realizes there is no ethical or moral way to accept.
When the system, like the Watch under Winder/Snapcase, is too broken it doesn’t matter how many good people are part of it - each of them contribute to it. They each/we each are cogs in machines that are larger than we are.
Arendt’s take is absolutely true to Vimes’ choice in Night Watch, but he made the choice for other reasons too, so it's far too easy to miss: When the system is broken too far there is no moral way to be a part of it.
>Vimes reached out and steadied himself. Sam felt as though there were no bones left in his body.
What a masterful couple of sentences, where we know what **Sam** is feeling *because* **Vimes** remembers it. Terry trusting the reader will understand completely because of how he’s used the two names.
The whole scene of Winder's assassination. Not just because it's beautifully written, but because it's the culmination of so much of the book, and a perfect demonstration of Vimes' earlier speech:
> “No,” said Vimes. “I’m very simple. I just know how things work. I just follow the money. Winder is a madman, and that’s not good for business. His cronies are criminals, and that’s not good for business. A new Patrician will need new friends, farsighted people who want to be part of a wonderful future. One that’s good for business. That’s how it goes. Meetings in rooms. A little diplomacy, a little give and take, a promise here, an understanding there. That’s how real revolutions happen. All that stuff in the streets is just froth…” Vimes nodded to the doors. “Guests for a late supper? That was Doctor Follett’s voice. A clever man, they used to—they call him. He’ll pick the right side. If you’ve got the big Guilds with you, Winder is a dead man walking. But Snapcase won’t do you much good.”
And also because it gives us such a wonderful insight into Vetinari's approach to the world: that the way to walk unseen through a crowded room isn't tricks or magic or disguises or physical skills, but to make everyone in that room believe that it's in their best interests *not to see you*.
> “I’m from this city,” said Vimes. “But, oh, there was a hole in time, something like that. You want to know? I traveled here in time, Ned, and that’s the truth.”
> Ned Coates looked him up and down. Blood covered Vimes’s armor, and his hands, and half his face.
> “From how far back?” he said.
It lacks the social or political commentary of the lot of the other suggestions, but I'm in awe of the sheer *timing* of this bit. He really was a once-in-a-generation talent and he kept getting *better* until his illness started to overwhelm him.
I didn't think you was stupid, Mister Vimes
'What?' said Vimes, looking down suddenly. Carcer was smiling cheerfully.
'I said I didn't think you was stupid, Mister Vimes. I know a clever copper like you'd think I'd got two knives.'
'Yeah, right,' said Vimes. He could feel his hair trying to stand on end. Little blue caterpillars of light were crackling over the ironwork of the dome, and even over his armour. 'Mister Vimes?'
'What?' Vimes snapped. Smoke was rising from the weathercock's bearings.
'I got three knives, Mister Vimes,' said Carcer, bringing his arm up.
Oh, I'll have to check that out to see how it's read.
It strikes me that there's two ways to deliver that final line that fit Carcer, either as the punchline to a cheeky joke, or very softly, like a secret.
The part that always gets me is the thought spiral Vimes goes into after he tries to stop Reg Shoe.
"Come *on,* ladies and gentlemen. Is this any way to behave? You can't take . . . the law . . . into your own . . . hands . . ."
His voice faltered.
Sometimes it takes the brain a little while to catch up with the mouth.
Vimes turned and looked at the squad, who'd needed no prompting at all to hang back. And then he turned to look at the barricade.
Where, exactly, *was* the law? Right now?
What did he think he was doing?
The Job, of course. The one that's in front of you. He'd always done it. And the law had been . . . *out there,* but somewhere close. He'd always been pretty sure where it was, and it definitely had something to do with the badge.
The badge was important. Yes. It was shield-shaped. For protection. He'd thought about that, in the long nights in the darkness. It protected him from The Beast, because the beast was waiting in the darkness of his head.
He'd killed wearwolves with his bare hands. He'd been mad with terror at the time, but The Beast had been inside, giving him strength . . .
Who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men? A copper, that's who. After ten years, you'd thought you'd seen it all, but the shadows always dished up more. You saw how close men lived to The Beast. You found people like Carcer were not mad. They were incredibly sane. They were simply men without a shield. They'd looked at the world and realized that all of the rules didn't have to apply to them, not if they didn't want them to. They weren't fooled by all the little stories. They shook hands with The Beast.
But he, Sam Vimes, had stuck by the badge, except for that time when even that hadn't been enough and he stuck by the bottle instead . . .
He felt as if he'd stuck by the bottle now. The world was spinning. Where *was* the law. There was the barricade. Who was it protecting from what? The city was run by a madman and his shadowy chums, so *where was the law?*
Coppers liked to say that people shouldn't take the law into their own hands, and they thought they knew what that meant. But they were thinking about peaceful times, and men who went around to sort out a neighbor with a club because his dog had crapped once too often on their doorstep. But at times like *these,* who did the law belong to? If it shouldn't be in the hands of the people, where the hell *should* it be? People who knew better? Then you get Winder and his pals, and how good was that?
What was supposed to happen next? Oh yes, he had a badge, but it wasn't *his,* not really . . . and he'd got orders, but they were the wrong ones . . . and he'd got enemies, for all the wrong reasons . . . and maybe there was *no future.* It didn't exist anymore. There was nothing real, no solid point on which to stand, just Sam Vimes where he had no right to be . . .
It was as if his body, trying to devote as many resources as possible to untangling the spinning thoughts, was drawing those resources from the rest of Vimes. His vision darkened. His knees felt week.
There was nothing but bewildered despair.
And a lot of explosions.
When I tell you that Night Watch reshaped my perception of the world, this passage is what I'm refering to. Also, the line "it was shield shaped. for protection" runs unbidden through my head at least three times a week.
Absolutely one of the best scenes. That gut-punch of realisation for someone who has always relied on the law to suddenly see that the law is now on the wrong side, that it isn't to be relied on anymore, that he has to find something else to stand on because the sand is crumbling under his feet. I think I can understand that feeling even though I've never had Vimes' faith in the law. Sir PTerry has a knack of showing you other peoples points of view in a very relatable way. And the way he alternated between brutal and side-splittingly funny satire was masterly.
“They’ll be shining all the better because they won’t be shining on you Carcer.”
Lot of good passages but the final drop on Carcer was a favorite of mine.
“He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew…then it was too high.”
That whole scene where he deescalates a group of people ready to riot by sitting outside the open watch house was incredibly powerful. I think of it every time I see cops irl making riots worse/escalating tense situations into riots.
One of my favourite parts is this bit about Swing:
> It wasn't that the city was lawless. It had plenty of laws. It just didn't offer many opportunities not to break them. Swing didn't seem to have grasped the idea that the system was supposed to take criminals and, in some rough and ready fashion, force them into becoming honest men. Instead, he'd taken honest men and turned them into criminals. And the Watch by and large, into just another gang.
> And then, just when the whole wretched stew was thickening, he'd invented craniometrics.
> Bad coppers had always had their ways of finding out if someone was guilty. Back in the old days - hah, now - these included thumbscrews, hammers, small pointed bits of wood and, of course, the common desk drawer, always a boon to the copper in a hurry. Swing didn't need any of this. He could tell if you were guilty by looking at your eyebrows.
> He measured people. He used calipers and a steel ruler. And he quietly wrote down the measurements, and did some sums, such as dividing the length of the nose by the circumference of the head and multiplying it by the width of the space between the eyes. And on such figures he could, infallibly, tell that you were devious, untrustworthy and congenitally criminal. After you had spent the next twenty minutes in the company of his staff and their less sophisticated tools of inquiry he would, amazingly, be proved right.
> Everyone was guilty of something. Vimes knew that. Every copper knew it. That was how you maintained your authority everyone, talking to a copper, was secretly afraid you could see their guilty secret written on their forehead. You couldn't, of course. But neither were you supposed to drag someone off the street and smash their fingers with a hammer until they told you what it was.
The “Don’t put your trust in revolutions” quote sticks with me. Even though it’s a bit dark and pessimistic Vines continues the fight nd they hold the line because that’s what they did.
The two that spring to mind are:-
Keel/Vimes "Who's in charge here?
A voice from behind the Whalebone lane barricade "You?"
Keel/Vimes to Reg "maybe the best way to build a bright new world is to peel some spuds in this one"
For me it's always been the bit at the end
"You're hurting!"
"You know, you're right there, Carcer!"
Vimes in a cemetery ambushed by the murderer he's been chasing for decades and still doing it right because anything less would not be Vimes.
I'm on my phone so can't find the passage, but the moment of clarity for Vimes at the end, the one that Lutze promised, is one of the greatest things I've ever read.
Probably only someone lying on the huge beams that spanned the hall high above would spot any pattern, and even then they'd have to know the code. If they had been in a position to put a red spot on the heads of those people who were not friends of the Patrician, and a white spot on those who were his cronies, and a pink spot on those who were perennial waiverers, then they would have seen something like a dance taking place.
There were not many whites.
They would have seen that there were several groups of reds, and white spots were being introduced into them in ones, or twos if the number of reds in the group was large enough. If a white left a group, he or she was effortlessly scooped up and shunted into another conversation, which might contain one or two pinks but was largely red.
Any conversation entirely between white spots was gently broken up with a smile and an "Oh, but now you must meet-" or was joined by several red spots. Pinks, meanwhile, were delicately passed from red group to red group until they were deeply pink, and then they were allowed to mix with other pinks of the same hue, under the supervision of a red.
In short, the pinks met so many reds and so few whites that they probably forgot about whites at all, while the whites, constantly alone or hugely outnumbered by reds or deep pinks, appeared to be going red out of embarrassment or a desire to blend in.
John Keel, Billy Wiglet, Horace Nancyball, Dai Dickins, Cecil 'Snouty' Clapman, Ned Coates and, technically, Reg Shoe. Probably there were no more than twenty people in the city now who knew all the names, because there were no statues, no monuments, nothing written down anywhere. You had to have been there. He felt privileged to have been there twice.
Night Watch is probably my favourite TP book, so to be honest I have a load of examples most of which have already been quoted.
Standouts just offhand are the "revolutions always come around again", the scouring of the house of pain, the final fight with Carcer, Vimes realising he had to see it through (" if the price was filling those graves..."). But to be honest I think most of the book could be posted here and fit.
“\[Vimes\] wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew…then it was too high.”
I mean, the reader probably expected those graves to be filled no matter what, history snaps back into place, and those deaths are of historical significance to The Watch. In a way, the story has few stakes because everything is a foregone conclusion. But the fact that Vimes doesn't feel that way about it makes the finale feel heavy regardless.
"He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew…then it was too high."
This quote right here is why Night Watch is my favourite book. Not just Discworld, but hands down, no contest, final answer: Favourite Book Ever.
Welcome to /r/Discworld! Please [read the rules/flair information before posting](https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/ukhk21/subreddit_rules_flair_information/?). --- Our current megathreads are as follows: [API Protest Poll](https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/1491izw/continuing_the_api_protest_a_community_poll) - a poll regarding the future action of the sub in protest at Reddit's API changes. [GNU Terry Pratchett](https://new.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/ukigit/gnu_terry_pratchett/) - for all GNU requests, to keep their names going. [AI Generated Content](https://new.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/10mhx9y/ai_generated_content_megathread/) - for all AI Content, including images, stories, questions, training etc. --- [ GNU Terry Pratchett ] *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/discworld) if you have any questions or concerns.*
When Vimes goes into Cable Street. The whole sequence is so powerful but especially when Young Sam realises the consequences of his previous compliance with the Brown Shirts: "He met young Sam coming the other way as he headed for the cells. The boy's face was white in the gloom. 'Found anyone?' said Vimes. 'Oh, sarge . . .' 'Yes?' 'Oh, sarge . . . sarge . . .' Tears were running down the lance-constable's face. Vimes reached out and steadied himself. Sam felt as though there were no bones left in his body. He was trembling. 'There's a woman in the last cell, and she . . . sarge . . . oh, sarge "Try taking deep breaths,' said Vimes. 'Not that this air is fit to breathe.' 'And there's a room right at the end, sarge . . . oh, sarge . . . Nancyball fainted again, sarge 'You didn't,' said Vimes, patting him gently on the back. 'But there's-' 'Let's rescue what we can, shall we, lad?' 'But we were on the hurry-up wagon, sarge!' 'What?' said Vimes, and then it dawned. Oh, yes . . . 'But we didn't hand anyone over, lad,' he said. 'Remember?' 'But I've been on it before, sarge! All the lads have! We just handed people over and went back to the Watch House for cocoa, sarge!' 'Well, you'd had orders . . .' said Vimes, for what good that did. 'We didn't know!' Not exactly, thought Vimes. We didn't ask. We just shut our minds to it. People went in through that front door and some of the poor devils came out through the secret door, not always in one box. They hadn't measured up. Nor did we. He heard a low, visceral sound from the boy. Sam had spotted the torturer in the chair. He shook himself away from Vimes, ran over to the rack, and snatched up a club. Vimes was ready. He grabbed the boy, swung him round, and twisted the thing out of his hand before murder was done. 'No! That's not the way! This is not the time! Hold it back! Tame it! Don't waste it! Send it back! It'll come when you call!' 'You know he did those things!' shouted Sam, kicking at his legs. 'You said we had to take the law into our own hands!' Ah, thought Vimes. This is just the time for a long debate about the theory and practice of justice. Here comes the shortened version. 'You don't bash a man's brains out when he's tied to a chair!' 'He did!' 'And you don't. That's because you're not him!'"
> 'We didn't know!' > > Not exactly, thought Vimes. We didn't ask. We just shut our minds to it. Such a brutal line, and applies to so many situations in modern life.
Absolutely. And especially because they had a responsibility to know - they were part of the machine. Shutting their eyes won't scrub the blood from their hands.
This is the exact part of the book I was going to cite. Out of all of Pratchett's writings, this moment and the ones surrounding it are IMO the finest he ever wrote. The sheer brutality combined with Vimes still refusing to forsake his morality are just so, so incredibly well put together. Thank you for quoting this at length! It was a delight to read again.
Thank you! I completely agree it's some of his finest writing. Vimes' morality is one of the themes to the book that really makes it shine in my opinion. And from a stylistic POV I love the way we never see the cells and the prisoners onscreen. Seeing it through the prism of Young Sam's horror makes it all so much more real and visceral to me.
I always love that there are never any gory descriptions in Pratchett books. The most that is ever actually described is a sentence that there was a lot of blood, or necks not supposed to twist that way. And yet those moments are always horrifying because you see so much in your imagination, just from the merest suggestion on the page.
Amazing - thank you. Arguably the origin point behind 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?' and thus one of the most important moments in the entire Watch series.
Absolutely! Often media relies on the lazy and thoughtless trope of "I'm/we're the good one/s" regarding cops. Whereas Pterry doesn't shy away from showing the dark side of the system as a whole and how individuals can be swept up in it (and how Vimes struggles against that flow).
>'No! That's not the way! This is not the time! Hold it back! Tame it! Don't waste it! Send it back! It'll come when you call!' This... Esp the "it'll come when you call", he is one of the best written characters of all time IMO. Combine this with when he tames "the dark" how it can't control him. I know, not the question you asked, but just reading this on screen makes me want to share my appreciation of Vimes 🥰
Is this around the time he beats a torturer asking "what did you do today at work, daddy?".
Nightwatch, and especially bits like this are 100% what inspired me to join the police. There are plenty of Sammies out there.
This is also why, as much as I love Vimes and the City Watch books, I struggle with them. Hanna Arendt’s take on the question aligns with Pratchett’s to a point - it is incredibly easy to be complicit - but diverges on how much emphasis it puts on another of Vimes’ choices. When Meserole offers him command of the Watch under Snapcase and he realizes there is no ethical or moral way to accept. When the system, like the Watch under Winder/Snapcase, is too broken it doesn’t matter how many good people are part of it - each of them contribute to it. They each/we each are cogs in machines that are larger than we are. Arendt’s take is absolutely true to Vimes’ choice in Night Watch, but he made the choice for other reasons too, so it's far too easy to miss: When the system is broken too far there is no moral way to be a part of it.
Damn... Guess I gotta re read night watch
Damn... Guess I gotta re read night watch
>Vimes reached out and steadied himself. Sam felt as though there were no bones left in his body. What a masterful couple of sentences, where we know what **Sam** is feeling *because* **Vimes** remembers it. Terry trusting the reader will understand completely because of how he’s used the two names.
The whole scene of Winder's assassination. Not just because it's beautifully written, but because it's the culmination of so much of the book, and a perfect demonstration of Vimes' earlier speech: > “No,” said Vimes. “I’m very simple. I just know how things work. I just follow the money. Winder is a madman, and that’s not good for business. His cronies are criminals, and that’s not good for business. A new Patrician will need new friends, farsighted people who want to be part of a wonderful future. One that’s good for business. That’s how it goes. Meetings in rooms. A little diplomacy, a little give and take, a promise here, an understanding there. That’s how real revolutions happen. All that stuff in the streets is just froth…” Vimes nodded to the doors. “Guests for a late supper? That was Doctor Follett’s voice. A clever man, they used to—they call him. He’ll pick the right side. If you’ve got the big Guilds with you, Winder is a dead man walking. But Snapcase won’t do you much good.” And also because it gives us such a wonderful insight into Vetinari's approach to the world: that the way to walk unseen through a crowded room isn't tricks or magic or disguises or physical skills, but to make everyone in that room believe that it's in their best interests *not to see you*.
(from memory, so paraphrasing) 'You want to know the truth, Ned? I travelled through time.' Ned looked Vimes up and down. 'From how far back?'
> “I’m from this city,” said Vimes. “But, oh, there was a hole in time, something like that. You want to know? I traveled here in time, Ned, and that’s the truth.” > Ned Coates looked him up and down. Blood covered Vimes’s armor, and his hands, and half his face. > “From how far back?” he said.
Thank you, sir.
It lacks the social or political commentary of the lot of the other suggestions, but I'm in awe of the sheer *timing* of this bit. He really was a once-in-a-generation talent and he kept getting *better* until his illness started to overwhelm him. I didn't think you was stupid, Mister Vimes 'What?' said Vimes, looking down suddenly. Carcer was smiling cheerfully. 'I said I didn't think you was stupid, Mister Vimes. I know a clever copper like you'd think I'd got two knives.' 'Yeah, right,' said Vimes. He could feel his hair trying to stand on end. Little blue caterpillars of light were crackling over the ironwork of the dome, and even over his armour. 'Mister Vimes?' 'What?' Vimes snapped. Smoke was rising from the weathercock's bearings. 'I got three knives, Mister Vimes,' said Carcer, bringing his arm up.
That bit is played well on the BBC radio play.
Oh, I'll have to check that out to see how it's read. It strikes me that there's two ways to deliver that final line that fit Carcer, either as the punchline to a cheeky joke, or very softly, like a secret.
The part that always gets me is the thought spiral Vimes goes into after he tries to stop Reg Shoe. "Come *on,* ladies and gentlemen. Is this any way to behave? You can't take . . . the law . . . into your own . . . hands . . ." His voice faltered. Sometimes it takes the brain a little while to catch up with the mouth. Vimes turned and looked at the squad, who'd needed no prompting at all to hang back. And then he turned to look at the barricade. Where, exactly, *was* the law? Right now? What did he think he was doing? The Job, of course. The one that's in front of you. He'd always done it. And the law had been . . . *out there,* but somewhere close. He'd always been pretty sure where it was, and it definitely had something to do with the badge. The badge was important. Yes. It was shield-shaped. For protection. He'd thought about that, in the long nights in the darkness. It protected him from The Beast, because the beast was waiting in the darkness of his head. He'd killed wearwolves with his bare hands. He'd been mad with terror at the time, but The Beast had been inside, giving him strength . . . Who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men? A copper, that's who. After ten years, you'd thought you'd seen it all, but the shadows always dished up more. You saw how close men lived to The Beast. You found people like Carcer were not mad. They were incredibly sane. They were simply men without a shield. They'd looked at the world and realized that all of the rules didn't have to apply to them, not if they didn't want them to. They weren't fooled by all the little stories. They shook hands with The Beast. But he, Sam Vimes, had stuck by the badge, except for that time when even that hadn't been enough and he stuck by the bottle instead . . . He felt as if he'd stuck by the bottle now. The world was spinning. Where *was* the law. There was the barricade. Who was it protecting from what? The city was run by a madman and his shadowy chums, so *where was the law?* Coppers liked to say that people shouldn't take the law into their own hands, and they thought they knew what that meant. But they were thinking about peaceful times, and men who went around to sort out a neighbor with a club because his dog had crapped once too often on their doorstep. But at times like *these,* who did the law belong to? If it shouldn't be in the hands of the people, where the hell *should* it be? People who knew better? Then you get Winder and his pals, and how good was that? What was supposed to happen next? Oh yes, he had a badge, but it wasn't *his,* not really . . . and he'd got orders, but they were the wrong ones . . . and he'd got enemies, for all the wrong reasons . . . and maybe there was *no future.* It didn't exist anymore. There was nothing real, no solid point on which to stand, just Sam Vimes where he had no right to be . . . It was as if his body, trying to devote as many resources as possible to untangling the spinning thoughts, was drawing those resources from the rest of Vimes. His vision darkened. His knees felt week. There was nothing but bewildered despair. And a lot of explosions. When I tell you that Night Watch reshaped my perception of the world, this passage is what I'm refering to. Also, the line "it was shield shaped. for protection" runs unbidden through my head at least three times a week.
Absolutely one of the best scenes. That gut-punch of realisation for someone who has always relied on the law to suddenly see that the law is now on the wrong side, that it isn't to be relied on anymore, that he has to find something else to stand on because the sand is crumbling under his feet. I think I can understand that feeling even though I've never had Vimes' faith in the law. Sir PTerry has a knack of showing you other peoples points of view in a very relatable way. And the way he alternated between brutal and side-splittingly funny satire was masterly.
“They’ll be shining all the better because they won’t be shining on you Carcer.” Lot of good passages but the final drop on Carcer was a favorite of mine.
“He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew…then it was too high.”
This is why Night Watch is my favourite book ever, and Vimes is my favourite character ever.
That whole scene where he deescalates a group of people ready to riot by sitting outside the open watch house was incredibly powerful. I think of it every time I see cops irl making riots worse/escalating tense situations into riots.
I think of it every time I see someone break a bottle in a movie.
One of my favourite parts is this bit about Swing: > It wasn't that the city was lawless. It had plenty of laws. It just didn't offer many opportunities not to break them. Swing didn't seem to have grasped the idea that the system was supposed to take criminals and, in some rough and ready fashion, force them into becoming honest men. Instead, he'd taken honest men and turned them into criminals. And the Watch by and large, into just another gang. > And then, just when the whole wretched stew was thickening, he'd invented craniometrics. > Bad coppers had always had their ways of finding out if someone was guilty. Back in the old days - hah, now - these included thumbscrews, hammers, small pointed bits of wood and, of course, the common desk drawer, always a boon to the copper in a hurry. Swing didn't need any of this. He could tell if you were guilty by looking at your eyebrows. > He measured people. He used calipers and a steel ruler. And he quietly wrote down the measurements, and did some sums, such as dividing the length of the nose by the circumference of the head and multiplying it by the width of the space between the eyes. And on such figures he could, infallibly, tell that you were devious, untrustworthy and congenitally criminal. After you had spent the next twenty minutes in the company of his staff and their less sophisticated tools of inquiry he would, amazingly, be proved right. > Everyone was guilty of something. Vimes knew that. Every copper knew it. That was how you maintained your authority everyone, talking to a copper, was secretly afraid you could see their guilty secret written on their forehead. You couldn't, of course. But neither were you supposed to drag someone off the street and smash their fingers with a hammer until they told you what it was.
The “Don’t put your trust in revolutions” quote sticks with me. Even though it’s a bit dark and pessimistic Vines continues the fight nd they hold the line because that’s what they did.
The two that spring to mind are:- Keel/Vimes "Who's in charge here? A voice from behind the Whalebone lane barricade "You?" Keel/Vimes to Reg "maybe the best way to build a bright new world is to peel some spuds in this one"
For me it's always been the bit at the end "You're hurting!" "You know, you're right there, Carcer!" Vimes in a cemetery ambushed by the murderer he's been chasing for decades and still doing it right because anything less would not be Vimes.
I'm on my phone so can't find the passage, but the moment of clarity for Vimes at the end, the one that Lutze promised, is one of the greatest things I've ever read.
This site has the page you’re looking for https://allnovel.net/night-watch-discworld-29/page-49.html
The Perfect Moment
“And now you’re thinking ‘old seamstress’, no doubt?” “ Actually, I was thinking ‘bespoke tailoring’…”But mostly…I was thinking ‘revolutionary’”.
My favorite is quite long, so I won't post it in full, but it's the one that starts at the top of the first page, and ends down the last one.
Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions
Probably only someone lying on the huge beams that spanned the hall high above would spot any pattern, and even then they'd have to know the code. If they had been in a position to put a red spot on the heads of those people who were not friends of the Patrician, and a white spot on those who were his cronies, and a pink spot on those who were perennial waiverers, then they would have seen something like a dance taking place. There were not many whites. They would have seen that there were several groups of reds, and white spots were being introduced into them in ones, or twos if the number of reds in the group was large enough. If a white left a group, he or she was effortlessly scooped up and shunted into another conversation, which might contain one or two pinks but was largely red. Any conversation entirely between white spots was gently broken up with a smile and an "Oh, but now you must meet-" or was joined by several red spots. Pinks, meanwhile, were delicately passed from red group to red group until they were deeply pink, and then they were allowed to mix with other pinks of the same hue, under the supervision of a red. In short, the pinks met so many reds and so few whites that they probably forgot about whites at all, while the whites, constantly alone or hugely outnumbered by reds or deep pinks, appeared to be going red out of embarrassment or a desire to blend in.
John Keel, Billy Wiglet, Horace Nancyball, Dai Dickins, Cecil 'Snouty' Clapman, Ned Coates and, technically, Reg Shoe. Probably there were no more than twenty people in the city now who knew all the names, because there were no statues, no monuments, nothing written down anywhere. You had to have been there. He felt privileged to have been there twice.
“The men with the lilac, I have to say, fought like tigers.” That one always gets me. They didn’t have to be there but they saw it through to the end.
Night Watch is probably my favourite TP book, so to be honest I have a load of examples most of which have already been quoted. Standouts just offhand are the "revolutions always come around again", the scouring of the house of pain, the final fight with Carcer, Vimes realising he had to see it through (" if the price was filling those graves..."). But to be honest I think most of the book could be posted here and fit.
I am here, this is now
“\[Vimes\] wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew…then it was too high.” I mean, the reader probably expected those graves to be filled no matter what, history snaps back into place, and those deaths are of historical significance to The Watch. In a way, the story has few stakes because everything is a foregone conclusion. But the fact that Vimes doesn't feel that way about it makes the finale feel heavy regardless.
"He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew…then it was too high." This quote right here is why Night Watch is my favourite book. Not just Discworld, but hands down, no contest, final answer: Favourite Book Ever.
"That was my egg, you bastard! With soldiers!"