Quotes from Ben Aaronovitch

Even at ten o'clock in the morning it was going to be full of members of the public. Rich, influential members of the public, many of them foreign, a lot of them with some level of diplomatic immunity. 'What I'm saying here,' Seawoll had said, 'is try to limit the amount of damage you do to none fucking whatsoever.' I don't know where I got this reputation for property damage, I really don't

was done fucking about in the shadows—it was time to get legal.

By this point I was eager to emulate Guleed and merge unobtrusively with the imitation French farmhouse fittet cupboard and counter unit behind me.

Lesley and I were the only coppers on the scene, and the public doesn't like it when the police start screaming: it contributes to an impression of things not being conducive to public calm.

I hate it when people listen to what I say in an inappropriate fashion.

All of this, Silver reckoned, went double for Americans, who intellectually knew the rest of the world existed but didn't really believe it.

Archway is where the post-war dream of the urban motorway died in the teeth of local opposition and the inability of the designers to answer basic traffic management questions.

A London copper doesn't like to intrude upon a traveller camp with anything less than a van full of bodies in riot gear – it's considered disrespectful otherwise.

Now I lack your extensive erudition," said Guleed once we were out of sight of the basement, "but that struck me as being just a little bit Lord of the Rings." "Nah," I said. "She didn't call it her precious—it doesn't count if you don't call it your precious.

I lasted about an hour before the naming of the Valar drove me to exercise.

says: it only becomes a social problem when the working man joins in.

In home furnishing terms, past a certain point, more money doesn't get you anything except an increase in insurance premiums. An

As property prices started rising, developers snatched up bomb sites and derelict buildings and erected the shapeless concrete lumps that have made the '70s the shining beacon of architectural splendor that it is.

That which does not kill us has to get up extra early in the morning if it wants to get us next time.

You know, your species [humans] has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched only by its ingenuity in trying to destroy itself.