Ben Aaronovitch Quotes
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I’d found a seventeenth-century map of the rivers of London.
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I've already told the police what happened, they didn't believe me. Why should you.
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I’d been warned in advance, so I’d given it some thought. 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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For a certain generation of African immigrants cleaning offices became part of the culture like male circumcision and supporting Arsenal.
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Good at his job, I guessed, but probably not at ease with things that fall outside his comfort zone. He was going to love us.
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The main purpose of an administrative meeting is to establish collective guilt for whatever fuck-up arises out of its decisions.
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Despite my mum being from a small village in the middle of a forest, I'm not a country person. I don't like my bacon sandwich to be curiously snuffling at my fingers. But sometimes being police means holding your breath and fondling a pig.
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Five story Georgian terrace whose elegant proportions would have caused the most hardened Canadian property developer’s soul to weep to see such beauty—just prior to having the place gutted and filled with the latest in personality-free interior design.
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So Newton, like all good seventeenth-century intellectuals, wrote in Latin because that was the international language of science, philosophy and, I found out later, upmarket pornography.
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This is why you have procedure, training and drill, so that you do things when your brain is too shocked to think for itself—ask any soldier.
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Despite what you think you know, most people don't want to fight, especially when evenly matched. … That's why you see those pissed young men doing the dance of "don't hold me back" while desperately hoping someone likes them enough to hold them back.
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Sometimes I wonder whether, if I’d been the one that went for coffee and not Lesley May, my life would have been much less interesting and certainly much less dangerous. Could it have been anyone, or was it destiny? When I’m considering this I find it helpful to quote the wisdom of my father, who once told me, ‘Who knows why the fuck anything happens?’ Covent
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He said it was wife’s idea to name their daughter after him but I didn’t believe him. Could have been worse, I decided. It could have been Nigella.
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THE TROUBLE with the old boy network is you can never be really sure whether it’s switched on or not and whether it’s operating in your interest or some other old boy’s.
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There's nothing quite like Latin for disguising the fact that you're making it up as you go along.
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Gave us the traditional look of weary outrage that you always get from someone who thinks they don’t have time for this shit.
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Most people don’t want to fight, especially when evenly matched. A mob will tear an individual to pieces and a man with a gun and a noble cause is happy to kill ever so many women and children, but risking a fair fight—not so easy. That’s why you see those pissed young men doing the dance of “don’t hold me back” while desperately hoping someone likes them enough to hold them back.
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I didn't ask why anybody would want to risk the electric two-step on the tracks because, as police, all three of us knew that there wasn't anything so stupid that somebody wouldn't try it sooner or later.
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Well, our victim had a thirst for knowledge. He was a student at St. Martins College.
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Questions would be asked. Answers would be ignored.
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Was it better to die in the illusion of sunshine and warmth or face death in a cold darkness of reality? Was it better to die in happy ignorance or terrified knowledge? The answer, if you're a Londoner, is that it's better not to die at all.
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Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence.
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But London didn’t care, she never does when you leave her because she knows for every one that leaves another two arrive. Besides, she was too busy painting on her neon lipstick and dolling herself up in red and gold.
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There’s nothing like having your girlfriend talk in geological time to make you feel insignificant.