Best 93 quotes of Ben Aaronovitch on MyQuotes

Ben Aaronovitch

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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. 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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    Conflict resolution,' said Nightingale. 'Is this what they teach at Hendon these days?' 'Yes, sir,' I said. 'But don't worry, they also teach us how to beat people with phone books and the ten best ways to plant evidence.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    ...don't ask me why I know what an Edwardian smoking jacket looks like: let's just say it has something to do with Doctor Who and leave it at that.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    Every male in the world thinks he's an excellent driver. Every copper who's ever had to pick an eyeball out of a puddle knows that most of them are kidding themselves.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    ...good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport - like base-jumping or crocodile-wrestling.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    Holy paranormal activity, Nightingale - to the Jag mobile.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    If you just warn people, they often simply ignore you. But if you ask them a question, then they have to think about it. 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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    I gave the prescribed Metropolitan Police "first greeting". "Oi!" I said "What do you think you're doing?

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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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    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.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    My Dad says that being a Londoner has nothing to do with where you're born. He says that there are people who get off a jumbo jet at Heathrow, go through immigration waving any kind of passport, hop on the tube and by the time the train's pulled into Piccadilly Circus they've become a Londoner.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    Somebody doesn't know they're not in Kansas anymore,' said Stephanopoulos.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    The general public have a warped view of the speed at which an investigation proceeds. They like to imagine tense conversations going on behind the venetian blinds and unshaven, but ruggedly handsome, detectives working themselves with single-minded devotion into the bottle and marital breakdown. 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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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. That is why every newly minted constable, regardless of their educational background, has to spend a two-year probationary period as an ordinary plod on the streets. This is because nothing builds character like being abused, spat at and vomited by members of the public.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with and ology tacked on the end.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    What do you think you're doing?

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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, 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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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. 'A Panzer-kampfwagen sechs Ausf E.' I stared at him. 'You knocked out a Tiger tank with a fireball?' 'Actually I knocked out two,' said Nightingale. 'I have to admit that the first one took three shots, one to disable the tracks, one through the driver's eye slot and one down the commander's hatch - brewed up rather nicely.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    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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    Ben Aaronovitch

    You put a spell on the dog," I said as we left the house. "Just a small one," said Nightingale. "So magic is real," I said. "Which makes you a...what?" "A wizard." "Like Harry Potter?" Nightingale sighed. "No," he said. "Not like Harry Potter." "In what way?" "I'm not a fictional character," said Nightingale.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    A romantic," said Nightingale much, much later. "The most dangerous people on Earth.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    As a typical Londoner, Gurcan had a high tolerance for random thoughtlessness; after all, if you live in the big city there's no point complaining that it's a big city, but even that tolerance has its limit and the name of that limit is 'taking the piss'.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    As I stepped onto the gloomy landing a word formed in my mind: two syllables, starts with a V and rhymes with dire. I froze in place. Nightingale said that everything was true, after a fashion, and that had to include vampires, didn’t it? I doubted they were anything like they were in books and on TV, and one thing was for certain — they absolutely weren’t going to sparkle in the sunlight.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    As Martin noted, to the detective conducting his interview, it was a good thing he'd been inebriated, because otherwise he would have wasted time screaming and running about- especially once he realized he was standing in a pool of blood.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    As Martin noted, to the detectives conducting his interview, it was a good thing he'd been inebriated, because otherwise he would have wasted time screaming and running about - especially once he realized he was standing in a pool of blood. Instead, with the slow methodical patience of the drunk and terrified, Martin Turner dialed 999 and asked for the police.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    As soon as we stopped sleeping with our cousins and build walls, temples and a few decent nightclubs, society became too complex for any one person to grasp all at once, and thus bureaucracy was born. A bureaucracy breaks the complexity down into a series of interlocking systems. You don't need to know how the systems fit together, or even what function your bit of the system has, you just perform your bit and the whole machine creaks on.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    Blackstone's Police Operational Handbook recommends the ABC of serious investigation: Assume nothing, Believe nothing, and Check everything.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    But I wasn't some terrified peasant, I was an apprentice and I had been trained by the man who led the reguard at Ettersberg.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    Can you sacrifice people?' I asked. 'Take their magic that way?' 'Yes,' he said. 'But there's a catch.' 'What's the catch?' 'You get hunted down even unto the ends of the Earth and summarily executed.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    Could it have been anyone, or was it destiny? When I'm considering this I find it helpful to quote the wisdom of my father, who once told me, "Who knows why the fuck anything happens?

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    Das Leben ist zu kurz, um schlechten Wein zu trinken. - Quoted from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    Despite what you think you know, most people don't want to fight, especially when evenly matched. … That's why you see those pissed young men doing the dance of "don't hold me back" while desperately hoping someone likes them enough to hold them back.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    First law of gossip - there's no point knowing something if somebody else doesn't know you know it.

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    Ben Aaronovitch

    Five hundred years ago the notoriously savvy Henry VIII discovered an elegant way to solve both his theological problems and his personal liquidity crisis —he dissolved the monasteries and nicked all their land.