Quotes from Ben Aaronovitch

I don't like it, Peter," he'd said after the morning briefing. "It's all too complicated. Chorley has proved masterful at deceiving us in the past

That's the nature of the beast," said Zach. "We are what we are.

This particular citadel of the mighty was reached by a glass sided lift which ran up a completely transparent service core that allowed one—and one assumes that here one refers to one as one—to appreciate the view over Hyde Park which, after all, is what one has paid upward of ten million to enjoy.

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

It seemed that her prospects were bleak but often when things are at their most desperate they become progressively worse leading to a spiral of despair that ends in inevitable destruction.

Richmond won on points, but only because one of them had a flask full of coffee.

He was sure that police box hadn't been there before.

Das Leben ist zu kurz, um schlechten Wein zu trinken. - Quoted from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I'm sorry, I couldn't find "a good song" in your music. —Siri

She was spontaneously created by the midichlorians,' I said. Both women gave me blank looks. 'Never mind.

Normally the police like to turn up nice and early, preferably around 6 a.m., because not only are people liable to be actually at home but that early in the morning they're rarely playing with a full deck. Today we were going in Sunday lunchtime because we weren't looking for shock and awe but aiming for sinister and creepy instead.

I slumped down in the easy chair. 'You've been dead for two hundred years, Henry,' I said. 'I'm fairly certain you can't murder someone who's already dead.' If you could, I thought, the Met would have a form for it.

Despite what you think you know, 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.

It's like hypnotism,' I told Warwick, after the two had been dispatched off to drink more coffee. But Warwick wasn't buying. 'Hypnotism doesn't work like that,' she said. 'And that's the way it's not like hypnotism,' I said.

Gaston was a short, bulky man in his late fifties who favoured tight jeans, studded belts and sleeveless T-shirts, the better to show off the tattoos on his own arms. Only the absence of a mullet or a purple Mohican saved him from a breach of the EU directive against egregious cliché embodiment.

Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris. It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured. Publius Cornelius Tacitus

Polidori had quite a lot to say about the dangers of breaking the pentagram when summoning a spirit. Having your soul dragged out and sent screaming down to hell was only the start of it. At each cardinal point of the pentagram I put one of my calculators.

But I've learned that just because something isn't real doesn't mean it's not important.

So, actions were still being actioned and me and Guleed were actioning them, and the wheels of justice ground on. Albeit in first gear. So

feeling that now familiar change in the phase state of existence, like a catch in the silence at the moment of creation.

That approach only works if the subject suffers from residual middle-class guilt—unfortunately the properly posh, the nouveau riche and senior legal professionals are rarely prey to such weaknesses. For them you have to go in obliquely and with maximum Downton Abbey.

Vikings," said Lesley. "Precisely," said Nightingale. "Bloodthirsty, but surprisingly erudite in a limited fashion." Well

Kumar and I ended up stuffing tissue paper up our nostrils, but agreed that if we had to come down again more drastic action would be justified - like amputation.

To them, fae basically meant anyone who was vaguely magical who hadn't gone to the right school, with the High Fae being the creatures referenced in medieval literature who dwelled in their own castles with a proper feudal set-up and an inexplicable need to marry virtuous Christian knights.