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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.

Ben Aaronovitch

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
Holy paranormal activity, Nightingale – to the Jag mobile.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Holy Nightingale Paranormal
It’s a sad fact of modern life that if you drive long enough, sooner or later you must leave London behind.
BEN AARONOVITCH

London Long Modern Life
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
This is your brain on magic.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Brain Innovation Magic
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
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
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.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Cooking Fire West
For a terrifying moment I thought he was going to hug me, but fortunately we both remembered we were English just in time. Still, it was a close call.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Call Close Hug Moments
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
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
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.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Character Educational Thinking
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.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Broken Disintegrate News People Stay Worst
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.
BEN AARONOVITCH

Expression Magic Tree Years
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

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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