“The media are doing this, not because they have a sinister motive, but because they love to feel that they are influencing events. That’s why they hate politicians so much, because politicians have direct power and they do not.”

Questions would be asked. Answers would be ignored.

That which does not kill us has to get up extra early in the morning if it wants to get us next time.

If you just warn people, they often simply ignore you. But if you ask them a question, then they have to think about it.

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.

For a terrifying moment I thought he was going to hug me, but fortunately we both remembered we were English just in time. Still, it was a close call.

…good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport – like base-jumping or crocodile-wrestling.

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.

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.

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.

Despite my mum being from a small village in the middle of a forest, I’m not a country person. I don’t like my bacon sandwich to be curiously snuffling at my fingers. But sometimes being police means holding your breath and fondling a pig.

A physical expression of formae. Or at least have got close enough to explain all those legendary swordsmen and their inexplicable desire to roost on the tops of bamboo trees.

He was calling it an atonic seizure because, even if he didn’t know why it had happened, it was important to give it a cool name.

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.

The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with and ology tacked on the end.

This is your brain on magic.

If you find yourself talking to the police, my advice is to stay calm but look guilty; it’s your safest bet.

There aren’t that many policy changes you can do, so I’d say you ride the wave and hope that maybe some of the external events help you.

I grew up listening to the quartets and I loved that so much that I wanted to see if I could make music and make it happen. It was just a series of events … me going to concerts and saying “I think I can do that”.

The first need of being is endurance; to endure with gladness if we can, with fortitude in any event.

Our past is not, as some fear, a series of events carved in stone that we must carry around for the rest of our lives… but a kaleidoscope of experiences that, when viewed through different lenses, can ‘color’ (change) how we see our present and future.

I’ve been producing documentaries on global warming for 20 years and have seen the early warnings of extreme weather events come true.

It’s in the nature of television to restrain the spontaneity of a live event. Things become more and more prepackaged.

We use the web to help people organize in the flesh, and then we take the images of those events and put them back on the web to make them add up to more than the sum of their parts.

History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That’s why events are always reinterpreted when values change.