Ben Aaronovitch Quotes
-
I don’t know why Nightingale was so surprised—I barely knew four and a half spells and you couldn’t have got me to give it up, and that’s despite close brushes with death by vampire, hanging, malignant spirit, riot, tigerman, and the ever-present risk of overdoing the magic and getting a brain aneurysm.
-
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.
-
he had the startled-rabbit look that civilians get after five minutes of helping the police with their inquiries. If they stay calm for too long it’s a sign that they’re professional villains or foreign or just plain stupid. All of which can get you locked up if you’re not careful. If you find yourself talking to the police, my advice is to stay calm but look guilty; it’s your safest bet.
-
A romantic," said Nightingale much, much later. "The most dangerous people on Earth.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
He asked if we were really ghost hunting, and I said we were. “What, like officially?” “Officially secret,” I said because discretion is supposed to be, if not our middle name, at least a nickname we occasionally answer to when we remember.
-
Caratacus suffered the double indignity of being taken to Rome in chains and having an opera written about him by Elgar.
-
We seem to be sitting around waiting for the next fucking disaster, which went into the official log as - DCI Seawoll felt that our operational posture was too reactive.
-
Blackstone's Police Operational Handbook recommends the ABC of serious investigation: Assume nothing, Believe nothing, and Check everything.
-
It’s not like me and Lesley are inconspicuous. Nightingale had winced, as he always does, at my incorrect use of the accusative pronoun but I think I’m beginning to wear him down.
-
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'.
-
He called it potentia because there's nothing quite like Latin for disguising the fact you're making it up as you go along.
-
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.
-
He farted as I reached the inner door as a sign, I decided, of his respect.
-
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.
-
Round and round and round we go and where we stop nobody knows.
-
Because were were both probationary constables, an experienced PC had been left to supervise us - a responsibility he diligently pursued from an all-night cafe on St. Martin's Close.
-
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.
-
But as the wise man said, life’s too short to drink bad wine. Regret is a terrible vintage.
-
The majestic equality of the law forbids rich and poor alike from pissing in the streets, sleeping under bridges, and stealing bread.
-
Missing kids are tough cases. I mean, murder is bad but at least the worst has already happened to the victim—they’re not going to get any deader. Missing kids come with a literal deadline, made worse by the fact that you don’t get to learn the timing until it’s too late.
-
I wanted to say that lots of things weren't in the libraries of the wise, including plate tectonics, molecular biology and the complete works of J. K. Rowling, but she'd probably say that I was missing the point.