“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.”

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.

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.

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.

I have done almost every human activity inside a taxi which does not require main drainage.

I came to a stark realization: chronic surpluses could be almost as destabilizing as chronic deficits.

Sometimes, you are going to miss a person who was an almost to you. And feel sad because there is no name for that feeling.

Hollywood is a strange place. The class structure here is more rigid than almost anyplace I’ve ever experienced. It’s made more difficult by the fact that it’s constantly changing.

But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from ‘testosterone poisoning.’

A taste; a painful longing. but the net is always too porous, and we are left with the sweet frustration of almost knowing, which is teasingly pleasurable.

Almost everybody that’s well-known gets tagged with a nickname.

Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.