Ben Aaronovitch Quotes

Is that your professional opinion?"
"Yes."
"Which as usual," said Seawoll, "is as about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

I wondered, not for the first time, whether all farmers become obsessed or if only obsessive people become farmers.

Low sample size—one of the reasons why magic and science are hard to reconcile.

Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that.
—Dizzy Gillespie

I've loaded this particular gun with scrap iron," she said. "Now, I don't know if a shot to the head will kill you or not. But just consider how much fun we can have finding out.

The Daily Mail had the scoop but the media had caught the smell of blood in the water and twenty-four-hour news outlets were running the bulletin every half an hour, with a teaser on the quarter in case your attention span was that short.

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.

I'm a magician, I am," he said. "I can see things that are really there.

I rang her and left a message identifying myself and giving an impression of urgency without actually saying anything concrete. Never record anything you wouldn’t want turning up on YouTube is my motto.

I’m not a peacock, but on occasion I like to dress to impress, although like most coppers I don’t wear much in the way of bling. The rule being never wear something around your neck that you don’t want to be strangled with.

Fortunately," said Nightingale, "seeing isn't always believing.

Nightingale says that conspiracies of silence are the only kind of conspiracies that stand the test of time.

Nightingale has always been reluctant to let me loose on the library and I must have frowned or something because he went on, “My worry with you, Peter, is not what you would learn but that, should you go into the library, you might never emerge again.”

Now I was used to it, the bell-like silence was louder than ever, and I was starting to get undertones of orange blossom and incense. You have to be careful with this stuff or you begin to sound like a wine taster—with about the same amount of meaningless bollocks.

We headed off to do some community outreach. This involves meeting people, listening to their stories and memorizing their names and faces in case you have to come back and arrest them at a later date.