Quotes by Ben Aaronovitch

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

I woke in the hour before dawn, stuck in that strange state where the memory of your dreams is still powerful enough to motivate your actions.

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.

I was tempted to tell her it was because we were British and actually had a sense of humour, but I try not to be cruel to foreigners, especially when theyre that strung out.

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.

We decided to go back to basics and put the frighteners on some snouts.Really?We adopted a proactive intelligence-gathering policy utilising appropriate stakeholders in the community and pre-established covert human intelligence sources.And nobody can put a frightener on a covert human quite like Lesley can.

We stopped and listened. Just on the cusp of hearing I detected a rhythmic pounding, more a vibration in the concrete than a sound.Drums, I said and then because I couldnt resist it. Drums in the deep.Drum and Bass in the deep, said Kumar.

I looked into the literature on this, said Nightingale, and it wasnt very helpful.Theres a literature about this?Youd be amazed, Constable, about what theres a literature on.

Ive already told the police what happened, they didnt believe me. Why should you, he said.Because were the people that believe people that other people dont believe, I said.How can I know that? he asked.Youre just going to have to believe me, I said.

This is why magic is worse even than quantum physics. Because, while both spit in the eye of common sense, Ive never yet had a Higgs bosun turn up and try to have a conversation with me.

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

Fuck me, I thought. I can do magic.

I did feel a something, like a catch in the silence at the moment of creation.

The problem with the so-called bloody surveillance state is that it’s hard work trying to track someone’s movements using CCTV – especially if they’re on foot. Part of the problem is that the cameras all belong to different people for different reasons. Westminster Council has a network for traffic violations, the Oxford Street Trading Association has a huge network aimed at shop-lifters and pickpockets, individual shops have their own systems, as do pubs, clubs and buses. When you walk around London it is important to remember that Big Brother may be watching you, or he could be having a piss, or reading the paper or helping redirect traffic around a car accident or maybe he’s just forgotten to turn the bloody thing on.

He called it potentia because theres nothing quite like Latin for disguising the fact youre making it up as you go along.

This is where the whole ape-descended thing reveals its worth, I thought madly. Sucks to be you, quadruped. Opposable thumbs - dont leave home without them.

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.

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.

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 youve generated some sort of lead, you go home and get on with the important things in life - like drinking and sleeping, and if youre lucky, a relationship with the gender and sexual orientation of your choice.

That’s because they don’t know,’ said Tyburn. ‘It’s like economics. Everybody’s got a theory, and some people make it their religion.