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This is your brain on magic.

Ben Aaronovitch

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

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

Clever Doctors People
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
What do you think you’re doing?
BEN AARONOVITCH

Lucky Charm Psycho Thinking
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.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Broken Jobs People
Somebody doesn’t know they’re not in Kansas anymore,’ said Stephanopoulos.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Kansas Knows Said
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
In the winter she curls up around a good book and dreams away the cold.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Book Dream Winter
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
If you just warn people, they often simply ignore you. But if you ask them a question, then they have to think about it.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Drunk People Thinking
That which does not kill us has to get up extra early in the morning if it wants to get us next time.
BEN AARONOVITCH

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

Advice Police Talking
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.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Almost Always Between Consequences Start Unless
The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with and ology tacked on the end.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Sound Study Victim
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.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Bamboo Close Enough Explain Expression Legendary Top
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
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
Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Coffee Espresso Excellent
The fact that it was entirely possible for someone to be all three simultaneously is why good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport – like BASE jumping or crocodile wrestling.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Country Jumping Possible Sport Wrestling
This I know for a fact: the reason African women have children is so that there’s someone else to do the housework.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Children Facts Reason
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
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
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?
BEN AARONOVITCH

East Potatoe
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

This is your brain on magic.

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This is your brain on magic.

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