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 AARONOVITCHThe Metropolitan Police Service is still, despite what people think, a working-class organisation and as such rejects totally the notion of an officer class.
More Ben Aaronovitch Quotes
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Holy paranormal activity, Nightingale – to the Jag mobile.
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In the winter she curls up around a good book and dreams away the cold.
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…good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport – like base-jumping or crocodile-wrestling.
BEN AARONOVITCH