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 AARONOVITCHThis is your brain on magic.
More Ben Aaronovitch Quotes
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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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It’s a sad fact of modern life that if you drive long enough, sooner or later you must leave London behind.
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My dad was a fairy,” said Zach. “And by that I don’t mean he dressed well and enjoyed musical theatre.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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…good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport – like base-jumping or crocodile-wrestling.
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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.
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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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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.
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The Metropolitan Police Service is still, despite what people think, a working-class organisation and as such rejects totally the notion of an officer class.
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I gave the prescribed Metropolitan Police “first greeting”. “Oi!” I said “What do you think you’re doing?
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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.
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Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence.
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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.
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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.
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What do you think you’re doing?
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Somebody doesn’t know they’re not in Kansas anymore,’ said Stephanopoulos.
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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.
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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.
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The clever people at CERN are smashing particles together in the hope that Doctor Who will turn up and tell them to stop
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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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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