Ben Aaronovitch Quotes
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The British have always been madly overambitious, and from one angle it can seem like bravery, but from another it looks suspiciously like a lack of foresight.
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It's a sad fact of modern life that sooner or later you will end up on YouTube doing something stupid. The trick, according to my dad, is to make a fool of yourself to the best of your ability.
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Then Beverley Brook stepped onto the footplate and pointed a shotgun straight at the Queen’s head – I recognised the Purdey from my trunk. It was nice to see it getting an airing. Beverley herself was wearing an oversized leather jerkin and jeans. Her dreads had been tied into a plait down her back and a pair of antique leather and brass goggles were pushed up onto her brow. ‘Put your hands on your head,’ she said, ‘and step away from the boyfriend.’ The Queen hissed and gripped the rope harder.
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When the Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812, the British, in time-honoured fashion, abandoned their allies. Who were subsequently wiped out by the Americans along with any other tribes that happened to be in the same general vicinity – even those that had actually been allied with the US government during the war. It’s exactly this sort of thing, of course, which gives colonialism a bad name.
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I didn't think that Herefordshire Social Services would be best pleased about me dumping a poorly socialised pre-teen with mind control powers on them.
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This is why magic is worse even than quantum physics. Because, while both spit in the eye of common sense, I've never yet had a Higgs bosun turn up and try to have a conversation with me.
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Back at the start of World War Two the authorities forbade the use of the Underground as an air raid shelter. Instead Londoners were supposed to rely on hastily built neighborhood shelters or on the famous Anderson shelters, which were basically rabbit hutches made from corrugated iron with some earth shoveled on top. Londoners being Londoners, the prohibition on using the Underground lasted right up until the first air raid warning, at which point the poorly educated but far from stupid populace of the capital did a quick back-of-the-envelope comparison between the stopping power of ten meters of earth and concrete and a few centimeters of compost, and moved underground en masse. The authorities were appalled. They tried exhortation, persuasion, and the outright use of force, but the Londoners wouldn’t budge. In fact, they started to organize their own bedding and refreshment services.
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It's important for a man to know his limitations, and my limitations started at moving to Peckham and hanging around with yardies, postcode wannabes and those weird, skinny white kids who don't get the irony in Eminem.
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Oh shit, I thought, if this isn’t the Low King of the Dwarves then I’m the President of the Cricklewood Branch of the Women’s Institute.
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Caratacus suffered the double indignity of being taken to Rome in chains and having an opera written about him by Elgar.
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A lifetime of disappointment had made him cynical, but you don’t stay an activist without a core of stubborn belief that things can get better – it’s a bit like being a Spurs supporter really.
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As a typical Londoner, Gurcan had a high tolerance for random thoughtlessness; after all, if you live in the big city there's no point complaining that it's a big city, but even that tolerance has its limit and the name of that limit is 'taking the piss'.
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I was tempted to tell her it was because we were British and actually had a sense of humour, but I try not to be cruel to foreigners, especially when they're that strung out.
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The media response to unusual weather is as ritualized and predictable as the stages of grief. First comes denial: "I can't believe there's so much snow." Then anger: "Why can't I drive my car, why are the trains not running?" Then blame: "Why haven't the local authorities sanded the roads, where are the snowplows, and how come the Canadians can deal with this and we can't?" This last stage goes on the longest and tends to trail off into a mumbled grumbling moan, enlivened by occasional ILLEGALS ATE MY SNOWPLOW headlines from the *Daily Mail....*
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Or at least of fending him off for long enough that we can sweep in heroically like the Seventh Cavalry.’ Burning tipis and shooting women and children, I thought.
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On the plus side, there were no rioters in sight but on the minus side this was probably because everywhere I looked was on fire.
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Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, I thought. For they are soggy and hard to light.
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In 1666, following an unfortunate workplace accident, the city of London burnt down.
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Actually I'd always thought he sat in the library with a slim volume of metaphysical poetry until the commissioner called him on the bat phone and summoned him into action. Holy paranormal activity, Nightingale - to the Jag mobile.
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A romantic," said Nightingale much, much later. "The most dangerous people on Earth.
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I showed her my warrant card, and she stared at it in confusion. You get that about half the time, mainly because most members of the public have never seen a warrant card close up and have no idea what the hell it is.
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The majestic equality of the law forbids rich and poor alike from pissing in the streets, sleeping under bridges, and stealing bread.
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The rest of the band faded down to almost nothing while my dad did his best Bill Evans impression — except hopefully without the untreated hepatitis.
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Round and round and round we go and where we stop nobody knows.