Ben Aaronovitch Quotes
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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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As Martin noted, to the detectives conducting his interview, it was a good thing he'd been inebriated, because otherwise he would have wasted time screaming and running about - especially once he realized he was standing in a pool of blood. Instead, with the slow methodical patience of the drunk and terrified, Martin Turner dialed 999 and asked for the police.
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What frustrated me was the thought that with three thousand years of history someone in China, some monk in a monastery halfway up a mountain, must have developed a magic kata, a physical expression of formae. Or at least have got close enough to explain all those legendary swordsmen and their inexplicable desire to roost on the tops of bamboo trees.
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That’s the nature of the beast. We are what we are.
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I've already told the police what happened, they didn't believe me. Why should you.
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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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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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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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The world was different before the war. We didn't have this instantaneous access to information that your generation has. The world was a bigger, more mysterious place - we still dreamed of secret caves in the Mountains of the Moon, and tiger hunting in the Punjab.
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Well, our victim had a thirst for knowledge. He was a student at St. Martins College.
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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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In the 1960s the planning department of the London County Council, whose unofficial motto was Finishing What the Luftwaffe Started, decided that what London really needed was a series of orbital motorways driven through its heart.
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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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For a certain generation of African immigrants cleaning offices became part of the culture like male circumcision and supporting Arsenal.
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This is where the whole ape-descended thing reveals its worth, I thought madly. Sucks to be you, quadruped. Opposable thumbs - don't leave home without them.
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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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If you find yourself talking to the police, my advice is to stay calm but look guilty; it's your safest bet.
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Here's a comforting thought for you, Peter,' he said. 'However long you may live, the world will never lose its ability to surprise you with its beauty.
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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 don’t mind getting drunk, but there always comes a moment in the evening when I find myself watching myself bumping into things and thinking—I’m bored of this, can I have full control of my brain back, please?
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Jeremy Beaumont-Jones had been lucky enough to be born rich. He wasn’t in the mad oligarch class but once you’re past a certain point, the sheer weight of your money sucks in wealth like a financial singularity. If you’re sensible enough not to blow it on race horses, cocaine or musical theatre, then it becomes a perpetual-motion money making machine.
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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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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.