Ben Aaronovitch Quotes
-
I gave the prescribed Metropolitan Police "first greeting". "Oi!" I said "What do you think you're doing?
-
The narrow hallway was lined with framed photographs while the far end was dominated by a faux movie poster for Gone with the Wind starring Ronald Reagan sweeping Margaret Thatcher off her feet while a mushroom cloud bloomed behind them. She promised to follow him to the end of the world. He promised to organise it.
-
I wasn't sure I found that particularly reassuring, but in the event of an attack I wasn't going to be as much use as Thomas 'Oh sorry, was that your Tiger Tank?' Nightingale.
-
The motto of West African cooking is that if the food doesn't set fire to the tablecloth the cook is being stingy with the pepper.
-
Guleed passed me the completed IIP on Caroline Linden-Limmer and pointed out a note which registered that she’d been granted a Gender Recognition Certificate when she was eighteen – changing her legal gender from male to female. ‘So . . .’ I started, but was cut off by the vast silence emanating from Stephanopoulos behind us. I looked over at Nightingale, who looked quizzically back, and decided to explain the implications later. Surprisingly, when I did, his reaction was outrage that somebody had to apply to a panel to determine what gender they were – he didn’t say it, but I got the strong impression that he felt such panels were intrinsically un-British. Like eugenics legislation, banning the burka and air conditioning.
-
My dad once told me that the secret to a happy life was never to start something with a girl unless you were willing to follow wherever it led. It's the best piece of advice he has ever given me, and probably the reason I was born.
-
When it’s still—when it’s the cellar of a house, or a ring of mushrooms in a forest or a gun emplacement outside Offenburg—it’s called one of two things. If it remains static and unchanging then we call it a despair. If it seeks to extend its influence then it is a malignancy. Or as the Director puts it—a despair will suck you in, but a malignancy is coming to get you.
-
The police never saw a noun they didn't want to turn into a verb, so it quickly became "to action", as in you action me to undertake a Falcon assessment, I action a Falcon assessment, a Falcon assessment has been actioned and we all action in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine. This, to review a major inqurity is to review the list of "actions" and their consequences, in the hope that you'll spot something that thirty-odd highly trained and experienced detectives didn't.
-
The very rich, having fundamentally missed the point of urban living, have long been frustrated by the fact that it’s impossible to squeeze the amenities of a country mansion—car showroom, swimming pool, cinema, servants quarters etc.—into the floor space of your average London terrace. Those without access to trans-dimensional engineering, a key Time Lord discovery, have had to resort to extending their houses into the ground. Thus proving that all that stands between your average rich person and a career in Bond villainy is access to an extinct volcano.
-
The laws of thermodynamics were very clear on the subject – all debts must be paid in full.
-
Rule of policing number one – when something good falls into your lap, pass it up the chain of command as quickly as possible before something else bad can happen.
-
I heard a woman scream with rage and frustration and then grunt like a tennis player.
-
The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with and ology tacked on the end.
-
Not being invited in is one of the boxes on the “suspicious behavior” bingo form that every copper carries around in their head along with “stupidly overpowerful dog” and being too quick to supply an alibi. Fill all the boxes and you too could win an all-expenses-paid visit to your local police station.
-
Hyde Park Corner is what happens when a bunch of urban planners take one look at the grinding circle of gridlock that surrounds the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and think—that’s what we want for our town.
-
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.
-
Somebody doesn't know they're not in Kansas anymore,' said Stephanopoulos.
-
People are conditioned by the media to think that black women are all shouting, and head shaking and girlfriending and “oh no you didn’t” and if they’re not sassy, then they’re dignified and downtrodden and soldiering on and “I don’t understand why folks just can’t get along.” But if you see a black woman go quiet the way Tyburn did, the eyes bright, the lips straight and the face still as a death mask, you have made an enemy for life, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred. Do
-
Cicero wouldn’t approve of my writing style, but at least I pronounce his name with a hard C.
-
When you're a boy your life can be measured out as a series of uncomfortable conversations reluctantly initiated by adults in an effort to tell you things that you either already know or really don't want to know.
-
Sited a third of the way up Dartmouth Park Hill, it had obviously been designed by a keen admirer of Albert Speer, particularly his later work on the monumental fortifications of the Atlantic Wall.
-
By this point I was eager to emulate Guleed and merge unobtrusively with the imitation French farmhouse fittet cupboard and counter unit behind me.
-
My milkshake brings all the gods to the yard.
-
The word “bollocks” is one of the most beautiful and flexible in the English language. It can be used to express emotional states ranging from ecstatic surprise to weary resignation in the face of inevitable disaster.