Quotes from Ben Aaronovitch

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

Round and round and round we go and where we stop nobody knows.

I surreptitiously checked to make sure she hadn't left the plates facing the wrong way again.

Just what was Princeton working on in Bambleweeny that made him think the Singularity—aka the nerd rapture, aka the moment when artificial intelligence passed humanity and accelerated away into an unknowable future—was arriving a couple of decades ahead of when its other acolytes and prophets proclaimed it would?

World ill-health is like world hunger," said Lady Helena. "We could end both tomorrow if we wanted to.

Even to suggest such a thing stretches absurdity to the point of effrontery.

Vita non est vivere sed valere vita est," he said — Life is more than merely staying alive.

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.

You do magic by learning formae which are like shapes in your mind that have an effect on the physical universe.

I, Anna Maria de Burgh Coppinger Isis solemnly swear on

Scrumpy," said Beverley. "What's the difference?" Beverley thought about it for a moment or two. "It's not made in a factory," she said. "So, no quality control then?" "Are you going to talk about it or drink it?" I took a swig—it was tart, alcoholic and tasted of apples. About what I look for in a cider, really.

The pianist, Daniel Hossack, was a classically trained music teacher at Westminster School for the terminally privileged.

Policing is about moving from the unknown to the known and then further—to the provable.

Every copper knows that the funfairs of Great Britain are run by the Showmen, a collection of interwoven families so clannish they officially constitute a separate ethnic group of their own. Their family names were painted on the generator trucks and blazoned across the tops of hoardings.

When Nightingale was training me he said that if you're not dead in the first instance, then your chances of survival are much improved. "By how much?" I'd asked. "That depends," said Nightingale. "On what?" "On what happens next," he said.

Apparently after six days baking pigs and herding bricks, the inhabitants would kick back with a spot of cock-fighting, bullbaiting, and ratting. It was the sort of place an adventurous gentleman might venture only if he didn't mind being beaten, rolled, and catching an exciting venereal disease.

MUCH AS I love the Jag, it's too conspicuous for everyday police work. So that day I was driving a battered silver ex–Metropolitan Police Ford Asbo that, despite my best efforts, smelled vaguely of old stakeouts and wet dog. I

Most people react this way when I tell them about the Nazis. Would it be more or less comforting if we could attribute that particular part of our history to the supernatural?

And where it all came from was a mystery, I thought. Like the changing of the seasons and the tides of the sea.

studying dead languages and

When faced with complex and inexplicable circumstances, a modern police officer will fall back onto one of two basic policing approaches. Option one; call for backup, arrest everyone in the vicinity and sort it out down the nick. Or option two; locate the nearest source of tea, sit everyone down and hope nobody's carrying a concealed weapon

Tell me that wasn't a spider?' said Ms Winstanley in a deceptively calm tone. 'Can't have been,' I said. 'Thank god for that,' she said. 'Can't stand spiders.' 'It was too big,' I said. 'You can't scale an exoskeleton up that far.

I released the fireball and there was a muffled thump from behind the target. A wisp of smoke curled up towards the ceiling. Behind me Molly sniggered. We did an hour of practice, at the end of which I was capable of flinging a fireball down the range at the dizzying speed of a bumblebee who'd met his pollen quota and was taking a moment to enjoy the view.

The bungalow was a hideous red-brick structure built, if I had to guess, in the early 1980s by some hack architect who'd been aiming at art deco and hit Tracy Emin instead.