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 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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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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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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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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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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Holy paranormal activity, Nightingale – to the Jag mobile.
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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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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 sad fact of modern life that if you drive long enough, sooner or later you must leave London behind.
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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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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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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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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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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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I gave the prescribed Metropolitan Police “first greeting”. “Oi!” I said “What do you think you’re doing?
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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.
BEN AARONOVITCH