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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

You know, your species [humans] has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched only by its ingenuity in trying to destroy itself.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Deception Self Trying
…good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport – like base-jumping or crocodile-wrestling.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Jumping Sports Wrestling
This is your brain on magic.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Brain Innovation Magic
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
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.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Males Puddles Thinking
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
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
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
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.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Drinking End Home Important Lucky Some Truth
…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
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

Fire Side Sight
The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with and ology tacked on the end.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Sound Study Victim
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.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Country Mean Pig
Somebody doesn’t know they’re not in Kansas anymore,’ said Stephanopoulos.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Kansas Knows Said
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
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. ‘
BEN AARONOVITCH

Eye Track Two

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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