Quotes from Ben Aaronovitch

The narrow hallway was lined with framed photographs while the far end was dominated by a faux movie poster for Gone with the Wind starring Ronald Reagan sweeping Margaret Thatcher off her feet while a mushroom cloud bloomed behind them. She promised to follow him to the end of the world. He promised to organise it.

Vanessa made a strange inarticulate sound common to Germans who've figured out how to start a sentence but don't know how it ends.

But risking a fair fight – not so easy. That's why you see those pissed young men doing the dance of the 'don't hold me back' while desperately hoping someone likes them enough to hold them back.

most people don't want to fight, especially when evenly matched. A mob will tear an individual to pieces and a man with a gun and a noble cause is happy to kill ever so many women and children, but risking a fair fight—not so easy. 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.

Was your husband upset?' 'How can you tell with an Englishman?' asked Mrs Coopertown.

the clever people at CERN are smashing particles together in the hope that Doctor Who will turn up and tell them to stop.

What makes you think I know?' asked Zach, who, if questioned, would deny his own existence out of sheer habit.

For a terrifying moment I thought he was going to hug me. Fortunately, we both remembered we were English just in time. Still...it was a close call." ~ Peter Grant

You can say what you like about late-sixties architecture, but when they baked in the ugly they baked it in good.

If you ask any copper why they stick at a job which exposes them to abuse from everyone from petty criminals all the way down to government ministers, they'll say it's the variety.

Pictures of Cheam adorn the walls of planning offices of every Home County to serve as an awful warning.

And I personally don't so much believe in it as have to massage its feet when I go home at night.

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.

Officially it's known as the Tumulus, but everyone I know calls it Boadicea's Mount because they think she watched her last battle with the Romans from there. The archaeologists say they're wrong because (a) the last battle was further north and (b) you got to pronounce her name with a hard "c".

The world was different before the war,' he said. 'We didn't have this instantaneous access to information that your generation has. The world was a bigger, more mysterious place - we still dreamed of secret caves in the Mountains of the Moon, and tiger hunting in the Punjab.

Absence of evidence, as any good archeologist will tell you, is not the same as evidence of absence

Who knows why the fuck anything happens?

You can't die of jazz," said Dr. Walid. "Can you?" I thought of Fats Navarro, Billie Holiday, and Charlie Parker who, when he died, was mistaken by a coroner for a man twice his real age. "You know," I said, "I think you'll find you can." Jazz

According to this thing I saw on the internet, cats and dogs use expressions on us that they don't use on each other. This being on account of the fact that we effectively co-evolved together. So unless sheep are susceptible to a look of long-suffering patience, I'm going to say that the one Ziggy gave me was reserved for humans.

Psalm 73," said Postmartin. "The motto of the Spanish Inquisition." "Well, fuck me," said Seawoll. "I wasn't expecting them.

Then you throw the bloody thing as far as you can, hopefully outside the area of immediate magical effect, where two minutes later it basically phones the Met control room and screams help, help, serious magic shenanigans here – send help – preferably Nightingale.

At least, right up to the point where she bit his dick off. 'With her vagina?' I asked, just to be clear. 'Yep,' said St John. 'You're sure?' 'It's not the sort of thing you make a mistake about,' he said. 'And you're sure it was teeth?' 'It felt like teeth,' he said. 'But to be honest, after it happened I really stopped paying attention.

The voice belonged to a plump round-faced woman of the sort that develops a good personality because the alternative is suicide.

Lips too thick and nose too wide–he looked like he'd stepped out of an early Asterix comic. Subconscious racism, I thought–it will fuck you up every time.