Top 100 Ben Aaronovitch Quotes
#1. The bungalow was a hideous red-brick structure built, if I had to guess, in the early 1980s by some hack architect who'd been aiming at art deco and hit Tracy Emin instead.
Ben Aaronovitch
#2. There was a list, Kimberley imagined, and in an obscure subsection of that list, a section that had not been properly updated since George Bush was President,
Ben Aaronovitch
#3. Jazz vampires,' said Stephanopoulos.
'I wish I hadn't started calling them that,' I said.
Ben Aaronovitch
#4. Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence.
Ben Aaronovitch
#5. Can you sacrifice people?' I asked. 'Take their magic that way?'
'Yes,' he said. 'But there's a catch.'
'What's the catch?'
'You get hunted down even unto the ends of the Earth and summarily executed.
Ben Aaronovitch
#6. Which meant I spent my spare time learning theory, studying dead languages and reading books like Essays on The Metaphysical by John "never saw a polysyllabic word he didn't like" Cartwright.
Ben Aaronovitch
#7. Conflict resolution,' said Nightingale. 'Is this what they teach at Hendon these days?'
'Yes, sir,' I said. 'But don't worry, they also teach us how to beat people with phone books and the ten best ways to plant evidence.
Ben Aaronovitch
#9. 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?
Ben Aaronovitch
#10. I looked into the literature on this," said Nightingale, "and it wasn't very helpful."
"There's a literature about this?"
"You'd be amazed, Constable, about what there's a literature on.
Ben Aaronovitch
#12. Abigail stared suspiciously at Lesley. "Why are you wearing a mask?" she asked.
"Because my face fell off," said Lesley.
Abigail considered this for a moment and then nodded. "Okay," she said.
Ben Aaronovitch
#13. 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.
Ben Aaronovitch
#14. People don't like to speak ill of the dead even when they're monsters, let alone when they're loved ones. People like to forget any bad things that someone did and why should they remember?
Ben Aaronovitch
#15. A London copper doesn't like to intrude upon a traveller camp with anything less than a van full of bodies in riot gear - it's considered disrespectful otherwise.
Ben Aaronovitch
#16. 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.
Ben Aaronovitch
#17. Vikings," said Lesley. "Precisely," said Nightingale. "Bloodthirsty, but surprisingly erudite in a limited fashion." Well
Ben Aaronovitch
#18. So that's when I came up with the most ridiculous plan since I'd decided to take a witness statement from a ghost. It was a plan so stupid that even Baldrick would have rejected it out of hand.
Ben Aaronovitch
#19. First law of gossip - there's no point knowing something if somebody else doesn't know you know it.
Ben Aaronovitch
#20. I think becoming a wizard is about discovering what's real and what isn't.
Ben Aaronovitch
#21. If you overdo it, there are consequences.
What kind of consequences?
Strokes, brain hemorrhages, aneurysms ...
How do you know when you have overdone it?
When you have a stroke, brain hemorrhage or an aneurysm.
Ben Aaronovitch
#22. There's more to life than just London," said Nightingale.
"People keep saying that," I said. "But I've never actually seen any proof.
Ben Aaronovitch
#23. He called it potentia because there's nothing quite like Latin for disguising the fact you're making it up as you go along.
Ben Aaronovitch
#24. I, Anna Maria de Burgh Coppinger Isis solemnly swear on
Ben Aaronovitch
#25. Who made the 999 call?"
"Dunno," said Purdy. "Mobile, probably."
It's officers like Purdy that give the Metropolitan Police its sterling reputation for customer service that makes us the envy of the civilised world.
Ben Aaronovitch
#26. That's how real men settle their differences, through reasoned discussion and a dispassionate analysis. He farted as I reached the inner door, a sign, I decided, of his respect. Alexander
Ben Aaronovitch
#27. I didn't tell him that it was all stored as binary information on rapidly spinning shiny discs, partly because I'd have to look up the details myself, but mostly because by the time he'd understood the technology it would have been replaced by something else.
Ben Aaronovitch
#28. This I know for a fact: the reason African women have children is so that there's someone else to do the housework.
Ben Aaronovitch
#29. He was transparent, the way holograms in films are transparent.Three dimensional, definitely really there and fucking ... transparent.
Ben Aaronovitch
#30. 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.
Ben Aaronovitch
#31. Whatever was in the sandwiches, you didn't want them getting too warm and going off, or starting to smell, or spontaneously mutating into a new life form.
Ben Aaronovitch
#32. Every male in the world thinks he's an excellent driver. Every copper who's ever had to pick an eyeball out of a puddle knows that most of them are kidding themselves.
Ben Aaronovitch
#33. Ghosts, I was thinking, memories - I wasn't sure there was a difference.
Ben Aaronovitch
#34. I have an idea," I said.
"This better not be a cunning plan," said Leslie.
Nightingale looked blank, but at least it got a chuckle from Dr Walid.
Ben Aaronovitch
#35. Boss,' I said into my Airwave. 'It's getting needlessly metaphysical out here.
Ben Aaronovitch
#36. The rise and fall of Teresa Cornelys proves three things: that the wages of sin are high, that you should "just say no" to opera, and that it's always wise to diversify your investment portfolio.
Ben Aaronovitch
#37. Fish and chip night was a Kumar family tradition that dated back to when Jaget was courting his wife and they used to meet in the last white English-owned fish and chip shop in Wembley on the basis that none of their relatives would go in there. "It
Ben Aaronovitch
#38. You have to call me Master." "Master?" "That's the tradition," said Nightingale. I said the word in my head and it kept on coming out massa.
Ben Aaronovitch
#39. What's it a charm for?' she asked.
The man thought about this for a moment.
'It's your basic all-enveloping protection charm,' he said, his hands describing a cupped circle in the air. 'For protection against ... '
'Envelopes?' said Abigail.
Ben Aaronovitch
#40. I saw a dark void under the platform and had just enough time to think: Fuck me he's a earthbender.
Ben Aaronovitch
#41. Zach looked at Carey in consternation, obviously wondering if we were using the rare good cop/loony cop interrogation technique.
Ben Aaronovitch
#42. It was a good plan, and like all plans since the dawn of time, this would fail to survive contact with real life.
Ben Aaronovitch
#43. Officially she was there to liaise with me on the case, but really she was there for the wide-screen TV, takeaways and the unresolved sexual tension.
Ben Aaronovitch
#45. Are there rules?'
'No gods, no staffs, first man to stay down for the count loses and we suspend the contest if the building collapses.'
- on magical duels
Ben Aaronovitch
#46. He threw a fireball at me. I threw a chimney stack at him - that's the London way.
Ben Aaronovitch
#47. insouciance. But there's just something uniquely intimidating about
Ben Aaronovitch
#48. One Hyde Park squatted next to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel like a stack of office furniture, and with all the elegance and charm of the inside of a photocopier. Albeit a brand new photocopier that doubled as a fax and document scanner.
Ben Aaronovitch
#49. As Conan the Barbarian famously said, That which does not kill us does not kill us.
Ben Aaronovitch
#50. What are my options?" she asked as I climbed into the driver's seat. "Meaningless euphemisms at one end and your full-on Unseen University at the other," I said. "The Unseen University is a bit like Hogwart's - " Stephanopoulos cut me off. "I have read some Terry Pratchett," she said.
Ben Aaronovitch
#51. Even in these days of eBay and superencrypted anonymous purchasing over the Internet, the safest way to buy stolen stuff is to meet a total stranger and hand over a wedge of untraceable cash. They don't know you, you don't know them - the only problem is where to meet.
Ben Aaronovitch
#52. The first rule about a black woman's hair is you don't talk about a black woman's hair. And the second rule is you don't ever touch a black woman's hair without getting written permission first.
Ben Aaronovitch
#53. We stopped and listened. Just on the cusp of hearing I detected a rhythmic pounding, more a vibration in the concrete than a sound.
'Drums,' I said and then because I couldn't resist it. 'Drums in the deep.'
'Drum and Bass in the deep,' said Kumar.
Ben Aaronovitch
#54. Inside, it was very dark but I am, if not exactly a master, then definitely an apprentice in the secret arts. And as such I laugh in the face of darkness.
Ben Aaronovitch
#55. You do magic by learning formae which are like shapes in your mind that have an effect on the physical universe.
Ben Aaronovitch
#56. It's like hypnotism,' I told Warwick, after the two had been dispatched off to drink more coffee. But Warwick wasn't buying.
'Hypnotism doesn't work like that,' she said.
'And that's the way it's not like hypnotism,' I said.
Ben Aaronovitch
#57. The voice belonged to a plump, round-faced woman of the sort that develops a good personality because the alternative is suicide.
Ben Aaronovitch
#58. NIGHTINGALE AND I did what all good coppers do when faced with a spare moment in the middle of the day - we went looking for a pub.
Ben Aaronovitch
#59. That's because they don't know,' said Tyburn. 'It's like economics. Everybody's got a theory, and some people make it their religion.
Ben Aaronovitch
#60. So, actions were still being actioned and me and Guleed were actioning them, and the wheels of justice ground on. Albeit in first gear. So
Ben Aaronovitch
#61. History happens," said the Doctor. "Even when I'm not around."
"Only by accident," said Kadiatu...
Ben Aaronovitch
#62. Peter Grant,' I said. 'Recent arrival, slacker and man of very little fame.
Ben Aaronovitch
#63. but the first rule about a black woman's hair is you don't talk about a black woman's hair. And the second rule is you don't ever touch a black woman's hair without getting written permission first. And that includes after sex, marriage, or death for that matter. This courtesy is not reciprocated.
Ben Aaronovitch
#64. The clever people at CERN are smashing particles together in the hope that Doctor Who will turn up and tell them to stop
Ben Aaronovitch
#65. Well, our victim had a thirst for knowledge," said Stephanopoulos. "He was a student at St. Martins College.
Ben Aaronovitch
#66. Urban Outfitters, eh," said Beverley. "That explains the Dr Denim shirt."
"My mum bought me that," I said.
"And you think that's less embarrassing?
Ben Aaronovitch
#67. 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.
Ben Aaronovitch
#68. My mum translated this in her head to "witchfinder," which was good because like most West Africans, she considered witchfinding a more respectable profession than policeman.
Ben Aaronovitch
#69. The Folly had last been refurbished in the 1930s when the British establishment firmly believed that central heating was the work, if not of the devil per se, then definitely evil foreigners bent on weakening the hardy British spirit.
Ben Aaronovitch
#70. Kumar and I ended up stuffing tissue paper up our nostrils, but agreed that if we had to come down again more drastic action would be justified - like amputation.
Ben Aaronovitch
#71. 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.
Ben Aaronovitch
#72. The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with and ology tacked on the end.
Ben Aaronovitch
#73. 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. And
Ben Aaronovitch
#74. You never said you used to play Dungeon and Dragons, Lesley had said when I explained my reasoning. I'd been tempted to tell her that I was thirteen at the time, and anyway it was Call of Cthulhu, but I've learned from bitter experience that such remarks generally only make things worse.
Ben Aaronovitch
#75. The rules of English grammar are largely an artificial construct with little or no bearing on the language as it is spoke.
Ben Aaronovitch
#76. I turned right onto the A410 which went north with suspiciously Roman straightness toward Aymestrey, which is less a village than a diorama of the last six hundred years of English vernacular architecture stretched along either side of the road.
Ben Aaronovitch
#77. I don't like my bacon sandwich to be curiously snuffling at my fingers.
Ben Aaronovitch
#78. With a grunt he levered himself to his feet, causing the chair to bang against the bookcase behind him and set the various objet d'bollocks rattling.
Ben Aaronovitch
#79. From then on, it was even twistier B-roads through a country so photgenically rural that I half expected to meet Bilbo Baggins around the next corner - providing he'd taken to driving a Nissan Micra.
Ben Aaronovitch
#80. Now, personally, I'd have been happier driving an armored personnel carrier in through the front door. But since we're the Met, and not the police department of a small town in Missouri, we didn't have one.
Ben Aaronovitch
#81. 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'.
Ben Aaronovitch
#82. 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.
Ben Aaronovitch
#83. 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. And
Ben Aaronovitch
#84. If you ask any copper why they stick at a job which exposes them to abuse from everyone from petty criminals all the way down to government ministers, they'll say it's the variety.
Ben Aaronovitch
#85. It's a police mantra that all members of the public are guilty of something, but some members of the public are more guilty than others.
Ben Aaronovitch
#87. I'd found a seventeenth-century map of the rivers of London.
Ben Aaronovitch
#88. I woke in the hour before dawn, stuck in that strange state where the memory of your dreams is still powerful enough to motivate your actions.
Ben Aaronovitch
#89. 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.
Ben Aaronovitch
#90. The evening was still warm enough for shirtsleeves, and the city was clinging to summer like a wannabe trophy wife to a promising center forward.
Ben Aaronovitch
#91. It's a sad fact of modern life that if you drive long enough, sooner or later you must leave London behind.
Ben Aaronovitch
#92. A major investigation, once it gets underway, is as exciting as watching reruns of Big Brother, although possibly involving less sex and violence.
Ben Aaronovitch
#93. I left in a hurry before he could change his mind, but I want to make it clear that at no point did I break into a skip
Ben Aaronovitch
#94. Landscaping is the great cardinal sin of modern architecture. It's not your garden, it's not a park - it's a formless patch of grass, shrubbery and the occasional tree that exists purely to stop the original developer's plans from looking like a howling concrete wilderness.
Ben Aaronovitch
#95. Dr Walid walked me past the security at reception and introduced me to today's dead body.
Ben Aaronovitch
#96. Taking a statement from anyone can be a long process on account of the fact that your average member of the public wouldn't know the truth if it donned a pink tutu and danced in front of them singing the Chicken Song. This
Ben Aaronovitch
#97. It's a truism in policing that witnesses and statements are fine, but nothing beats empirical physical evidence. Actually it isn't a truism because most policemen think the word 'empirical' is something to do with Darth Vader, but it damn well should be.
Ben Aaronovitch
#98. 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.
Ben Aaronovitch
#99. 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.
Ben Aaronovitch
#100. The main purpose of an administrative meeting is to establish collective guilt for whatever fuck-up arises out of its decisions. That
Ben Aaronovitch
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