Ben Aaronovitch Quotes

As police you can live with the violence, the squalor and the stupidity—it’s the waste of people’s futures that really grinds you down.

Gaston did betray an abstracted quality that might have been the result of magic. But was more likely down to consuming, I suspected, a tremendous amount of recreational chemicals.

It’s like with germ warfare. They weaponise germs for aggression and we say we study weaponised germs purely for defensive purposes. Nobody likes to admit they’re doing it but everybody knows everybody else is doing it.

He believed in a mystical connection between the farmer and the soil."
"And you don't?" I asked.
"I believe there's a connection," she said. "I just happen to believe it's biochemical.

Police work," said Stefan, "is ninety per cent paperwork, nine per cent bullshit and one per cent horror.

None of this was real.
But I’ve learned that just because something isn’t real doesn’t mean it’s not important.

I’m all for courageous action, in moderation, Peter. But you have an alarming tendency toward heroics.

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

A romantic," said Nightingale. "The most dangerous people on earth.

Common sense said I should scarper. But is anyone will tell you, me and common sense have always had an open relationship.

I found that if you voluntarily take on a chore somebody else doesn’t want to do, they don’t check the results too closely—in case they have to do it again themselves.

I pointed out that, according to Bev, half the ecological disasters in the world occurred when people removed “pests” or predators without thinking through the consequences.

This guy [Security Guard] was in a navy suit with an unfortunate orange tie, and was nearing us with the caution of a man on a minimum wage zero hours contract who planned to give his employers exactly what they paid for.

Foxholes might breed belief, but trench systems are full of fatalistic cynics.

Upstairs, MOLA’s offices had the same open-plan cubicle based workspace that has been the delight of code monkeys and low-level paper pushers since one time and motion consultant said to another, “Hey, you know, I don’t think we’ve really dehumanized these white collar drones enough.”