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 AARONOVITCHWhen 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.
More Ben Aaronovitch Quotes
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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.
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This is your brain on magic.
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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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If you just warn people, they often simply ignore you. But if you ask them a question, then they have to think about it.
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The first rule about a black woman’s hair is you don’t talk about a black woman’s hair. And the second rule is you don’t ever touch a black woman’s hair without getting written permission first.
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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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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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The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with and ology tacked on the end.
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Holy paranormal activity, Nightingale – to the Jag mobile.
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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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…good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport – like base-jumping or crocodile-wrestling.
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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.
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You know, your species [humans] has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched only by its ingenuity in trying to destroy itself.
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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.
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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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Questions would be asked. Answers would be ignored.
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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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That which does not kill us has to get up extra early in the morning if it wants to get us next time.
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Being a seasoned Londoner, Martin gave the body the “London once-over” – a quick glance to determine whether this was a drunk, a crazy or a human being in distress.
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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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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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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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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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Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence.
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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.
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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.
BEN AARONOVITCH