Ben Aaronovitch Quotes
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I ended up learning magic because you can’t trust the British to keep to an agreement over the long term.
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I’d found a seventeenth-century map of the rivers of London.
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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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This is a speech we've all heard before. From the con artists who aren't like the burglars, who aren't like the armed robbers, who only ever broke a bone if the victim had it coming and the murderers who made 'one mistake' and are forced to pay for it for the rest of their lives. They want to know what you're doing about the real criminals, the rapists and the paedophiles. Who want to know why you're wasting resources on them when we should be tackling female genital mutilation or political corruption.
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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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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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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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This book is dedicated to all the people who get up and do something about it, whatever “it” is and however small the thing it is they do.
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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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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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There's nothing quite like Latin for disguising the fact that you're making it up as you go along.
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Well, our victim had a thirst for knowledge. He was a student at St. Martins College.
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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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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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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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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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Questions would be asked. Answers would be ignored.
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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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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 like having your girlfriend talk in geological time to make you feel insignificant.
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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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Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence.
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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.