Questions would be asked. Answers would be ignored.
BEN AARONOVITCHThe 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.
More Ben Aaronovitch Quotes
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That which does not kill us has to get up extra early in the morning if it wants to get us next time.
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This I know for a fact: the reason African women have children is so that there’s someone else to do the housework.
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Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence.
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If you just warn people, they often simply ignore you. But if you ask them a question, then they have to think about it.
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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.
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…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.
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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. ‘
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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.
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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.
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What frustrated me was the thought that with three thousand years of history someone in China, some monk in a monastery halfway up a mountain, must have developed a magic kata.
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Carved above the lintel were the words SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST. Science points east, I wondered? Science is portentous, yes? Science protests too much. Scientific potatoes rule. Had I stumbled on the lair of dangerous plant geneticists?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
BEN AARONOVITCH