“Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence.”

I gave the prescribed Metropolitan Police “first greeting”. “Oi!” I said “What do you think you’re doing?

Holy paranormal activity, Nightingale – to the Jag mobile.

The worst part is staying in the room after you’ve broken the news, so that you’re forced to be there when someone’s life disintegrates around them. Some people say it doesn’t bother them – such people are not to be trusted.

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.

And once they start to think about the consequences, they almost always calm down. Unless they’re drunk, of course. Or stoned. Or aged between fourteen and twenty-one. Or Glaswegian.

The clever people at CERN are smashing particles together in the hope that Doctor Who will turn up and tell them to stop

In the winter she curls up around a good book and dreams away the cold.

What do you think you’re doing?

Somebody doesn’t know they’re not in Kansas anymore,’ said Stephanopoulos.

What’s the biggest thing you’ve zapped with a fireball?’ I asked. ‘That would be a tiger,’said Nightingale. ‘Well don’t tell Greenpeace,’ I said. ‘They’re an endagered species.’ ‘Not that sort of tiger,’ said Nightingale. ‘

If you ask any police officer what the worst part of the job is, they will always say breaking bad news to relatives, but this is not the truth.

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.

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.

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

My dad was a fairy,” said Zach. “And by that I don’t mean he dressed well and enjoyed musical theatre.

The truth is that at the end of the day, unless you’ve generated some sort of lead, you go home and get on with the important things in life – like drinking and sleeping, and if you’re lucky, a relationship with the gender and sexual orientation of your choice.

By the time I had finished my coffee and returned to the streets, the rain had temporarily abated, but the streets were full of vast puddles where the drains where unable to cope with the volume of water.

Decaffeinated coffee is kind of like kissing your sister.

I get on Twitter, one of my routines during the day, if I’m home is, I wake up, get a cup of coffee, turn on the Weather Channel and I’ll look at what people are saying to me on Twitter on my phone.

I move out here, and next thing I know I’m 25, and the only thing I’ve heard is, ‘Can you get a coffee, can you hurry up with the thing, blah blah blah.’

Lightnin’ Hopkins was something of a fixture on the Houston coffee house scene so we were witness to eccentric blues brilliance close up.

Rock and Roll is instant coffee.

The people are immensely likable- cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted, and unfailingly obliging. Their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water. They have a society that is prosperous, well ordered, and instinctively egalitarian.

The strangest thing is at tea breaks, or coffee breaks or lunch, you forget you’re a zombie. And you’re talking about politics to somebody at the table and you forget that you have a bullet hole in your forehead.