Ben Aaronovitch Quotes
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Most people don't see half of what's in front of them. Your visual cortex does a shit load of imaging processing before the signal even gets to your brain, whose priorities are still checking the ancestral Savannah for dangerous predators, edible berries and climable trees. That's why a sudden cat in the night can make you jump and some people when distracted, can walk right out in front of a bus. Your brain just isn't interested in those large moving chunks of metal or the static heaps of brightly colored stuff that piles up in drifts around us. Never mind all that, says your brain, it's those silent fur-covered merchants of death you've got to watch out for.
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I think becoming a wizard is about discovering what's real and what isn't.
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With a grunt he levered himself to his feet, causing the chair to bang against the bookcase behind him and set the various objet d’bollocks rattling.
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The house had probably cost a couple of million quid, with its two stories plus loft conversion, red brick, and detailing on the porch roof that hinted at Arts and Crafts without actually making it over the finishing line. It was at least mercifully free of pebble-dash and fake half-timbering. They’d retained the original sash windows but installed the venetian blinds that have replaced net curtains as the genteel response to sharing your neighborhood with other human beings.
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For a terrifying moment I thought he was going to hug me, but fortunately we both remembered we were English just in time. Still, it was a close call.
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He was from Yorkshire, or somewhere like that, and like many Northerners with issues, he'd moved to London as a cheap alternative to psychotherapy.
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Then he smiled at me and for that moment, and just that moment, I forgave him everything—everything—because now I knew what joy looked like and I was part of it.
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I was just looking to ascertain the whereabouts of the proprietor when I stumbled across the Class A controlled substances that were in plain sight in the bottom drawer of a locked desk in an upstairs office, m’lord.” Leave the police alone in a room for five minutes and we start looking in drawers, locked or otherwise. It’s a terrible habit.
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Every male in the world thinks he's an excellent driver. Every copper who's ever had to pick an eyeball out of a puddle knows that most of them are kidding themselves.
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MUCH AS I love the Jag, it’s too conspicuous for everyday police work. So that day I was driving a battered silver ex–Metropolitan Police Ford Asbo that, despite my best efforts, smelled vaguely of old stakeouts and wet dog.
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She was staring at us over the top of a pair of completely pointless sunglasses and her phone was playing what I now recognised as The Day the World Turned Day-Glo by X-Ray Specs.
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When it was my turn and I stood up and called for life, liberty and peace and managed to sit down before I added a hard-boiled egg to the list.
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NIGHTINGALE AND I did what all good coppers do when faced with a spare moment in the middle of the day—we went looking for a pub.
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Ever since mankind stopped wandering around aimlessly and started cultivating its own food, society has been growing more complex. As soon as we stopped sleeping with our cousins and built walls, temples and a few decent nightclubs, society became too complex for any one person to grasp all at once, and thus bureaucracy was born.
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Fuck me. We're living in Isengard.
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But risking a fair fight – not so easy. That’s why you see those pissed young men doing the dance of the ‘don’t hold me back’ while desperately hoping someone likes them enough to hold them back.
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Richmond won on points, but only because one of them had a flask full of coffee.
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The designer had probably been going for Turkish Bath but had hit Czech Porn Shoot instead.
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Like a lot of London, Richmond town centre had been laid out back when town planning was something that happened to other people.
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It started at one thirty on a cold Tuesday morning in January when Martin Turner, Street performer and, in his own words, apprentice gigolo, tripped over a body in front of the West Portico of St. Paul's at Covent Garden. Martin, who was none too sober himself, at first thought the body was that of one of the many celebrants who had chosen the Piazza as a convenient outdoor toilet and dormitory. Being a seasoned Londoner, Martin gave the body the "London once-over" - a quick glance to determine whether this was a drunk, a crazy or a human being in distress. The fact that it was entirely possible for someone to be all three simultaneously is why good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport - like BASE jumping or crocodile wrestling. Martin, noting the good quality coat and shoes, had just pegged the body as a drunk when he noticed that it was in fact missing its head.
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There was a list, Kimberley imagined, and in an obscure subsection of that list, a section that had not been properly updated since George Bush was President.
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I turned right onto the A410 which went north with suspiciously Roman straightness toward Aymestrey, which is less a village than a diorama of the last six hundred years of English vernacular architecture stretched along either side of the road.
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Because who is more oppressed. Those that seek nothing but entitlements for themselves or those that claim for everything, social security, housing benefit, disability and pay for nothing.
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MY DAD says that being a Londoner has nothing to do with where you’re born. He says that there are people who get off a jumbo jet at Heathrow, go through immigration waving any kind of passport, hop on the tube, and by the time the train’s pulled into Piccadilly Circus they’ve become Londoners. He said there were others, some of whom were born within the sound of the Bow Bells, who spend their whole life dreaming of an escape. When they do go, they almost always head for Norfolk where the skies are big, the land is flat, and the demographics are full of creamy-white goodness.