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

Ben Aaronovitch

Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Coffee Espresso Excellent
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.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Giving Important Name
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.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Events Hate Media
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

Garden Park Tree
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.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Call Close Hug Moments
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

Guilty Member Police
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.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Bats Library Phones
The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with and ology tacked on the end.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Sound Study Victim
Questions would be asked. Answers would be ignored.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Answers Ignored Question
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.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Cooking Fire West
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.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Dad Girl Happy Life
…don’t ask me why I know what an Edwardian smoking jacket looks like: let’s just say it has something to do with Doctor Who and leave it at that.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Doctors Looks Smoking
It’s a sad fact of modern life that if you drive long enough, sooner or later you must leave London behind.
BEN AARONOVITCH

London Long Modern Life
What do you think you’re doing?
BEN AARONOVITCH

Lucky Charm Psycho Thinking
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.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Adults Boys Effort
Are they really gods?” “I never worry about theological questions,” said Nightingale. “They exist, they have power and they can breach the Queen’s peace – that makes them a police matter.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Police Queen Worry

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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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