Ben Aaronovitch Quotes

I don’t like the fact that all we have so far is that somebody did something to somebody at some time which may or may not have some fucking connection so some other people who we’re not sure still exist.

Nothing attracts the powerful quite like more power.

Ask not for whom the buck stops, I thought, it stops for thee.

Anything else to report?" he asked.
"A creeping sense of existential dread," I said. "Apart from that I'm good.

According to my therapist, attaching conditionals to your past is a classic distancing technique indicating an unwillingness to face your memories directly. Or, I pointed out, it could be a rhetorical device designed to add a humorous note to enliven a story. To which she said, “Or both.” You can’t win with therapists, you know. And even if you do, they just tell you it’s part of the process.

If you run everywhere you miss stuff that you might have been better off noticing—just saying.

She had the startled rabbit look that civilians get after five minutes of helping the police with their inquiries. If they stay calm for too long it’s a sign that they’re professional villains or foreign or just plain stupid. All of which can get you locked up if you’re not careful. If you find yourself talking to the police, my advice is to stay calm but look guilty; it’s your safest bet.

From a policing point of view, guns are a pain. Once someone is known to be tooled up, your operational priorities are suddenly fucked up. It all becomes about managing whoever was stupid enough to pull a gun in central London and your number one priority is public safety, followed closely by officer safety and then, not so closely, by the safety of the moron with the gun.

Nightingale had taught me to be cautious of the early sources. “A great deal of it is accurate,” he said. “And a great deal is less so. Unfortunately it can be difficult to determine which is which.”

Dedication: This book is dedicated to all the people who get up and do something about it, whatever "it" is and however small the thing is they do.

There we continued the time-honored tradition of brazenly lying through our teeth while telling nothing but the truth.

The trouble with turning a blind eye is that people often take the opportunity to punch you in the face.

There’s nothing like having your girlfriend talk in geological time to make you feel insignificant.

Questions would be asked. Answers would be ignored.

I am a goddess, Peter, a creature of temperament and whimsy. I’m supposed to be arbitrary and mercurial—it’s practically my job description.