Quotes from Ben Aaronovitch

The police never saw a noun they didn't want to turn into a verb, so it quickly became "to action", as in you action me to undertake a Falcon assessment, I action a Falcon assessment, a Falcon assessment has been actioned and we all action in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine. This, to review a major inqurity is to review the list of "actions" and their consequences, in the hope that you'll spot something that thirty-odd highly trained and experienced detectives didn't.

This is where the whole ape-descended thing reveals its worth, I thought madly. Sucks to be you, quadruped. Opposable thumbs - don't leave home without them.

Right from the start Abigail used to moan and fidget as her hair was relaxed or braided or thermally reconditioned, but her dad was determined that his child wasn't going to embarrass him in public. That all stopped when Abigail turned eleven and calmly announced that she had ChildLine on speed?dial and the next person who came near her with a hair extension, chemical straightener, or, God forbid, a hot comb, was going to end up explaining their actions to Social Services.

I think you're going to find Marcus Aurelius particularly useful.' 'For what?' I asked. Nightingale hesitated. 'Quoting, mainly,' he said. 'And thus maintaining an air of erudition and authority.

We'd considered wearing uniform but Lesley said, what with her mask and everything, she'd look like a plastic cop monster from Doctor Who. I managed to restrain myself from telling her their real name.

We can't have your people fighting each other," I said. The 'royal we' is very important in police work; it reminds the person you're talking to that behind you stands the mighty institution that is the Metropolitan Police, robed in the full majesty of the law and capable, in manpower terms, of invading a small country. You only hope when you're using that term that the whole edifice is currently facing in the same direction as you are.

He threw a fireball at me. I threw a chimney stack at him - that's the London way.

Once the telephone had been invented, it was only a matter of time before the police got in on the new technology and, first in Glasgow and then in London, the police box was born. Here a police officer in need of assistance could find a telephone link to Scotland Yard, a dry space to do "paperwork" and, in certain extreme cases, a life of adventure through space and time.

As Conan the Barbarian famously said, "That which does not kill us does not kill us.

The mark was from the glue that once held a folder into which a library card would have fitted back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the earth and computers were the size of washing machines.

If you overdo it, there are consequences. What kind of consequences? Strokes, brain hemorrhages, aneurysms... How do you know when you have overdone it? When you have a stroke, brain hemorrhage or an aneurysm.

This I know for a fact: the reason African women have children is so that there's someone else to do the housework.

When the Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812, the British, in time-honoured fashion, abandoned their allies. Who were subsequently wiped out by the Americans along with any other tribes that happened to be in the same general vicinity – even those that had actually been allied with the US government during the war. It's exactly this sort of thing, of course, which gives colonialism a bad name.

This is your brain on magic.

The kitchen was the kind of brushed steel monstrosity that looks more like it's designed to weaponise viruses than cook dinner.

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. Since the principle of any rich person who wants to stay rich is, never give anything away unless you absolutely have to, the land has stayed with Crown ever since.

Ethically challenged magical practitioners," I said.

Despite my mum being from a small village in the middle of a forest, I'm not a country person. I don't like my bacon sandwich to be curiously snuffling at my fingers. But sometimes being police means holding your breath and fondling a pig.

I've already told the police what happened, but they don't believe me. Why would you?' he said. 'Because we're the people that believe people that other people don't believe,' I said. 'How can I know that?' he asked. 'You're just going to have to believe me,' I said.

I texted Nightingale to let him know our change in disposition and then I picked up my Pliny, because nothing says stuck all alone in your flat like a Roman know-it-all

A major investigation, once it gets underway, is as exciting as watching reruns of Big Brother, although possibly involving less sex and violence.

I find it helpful to quote the wisdom of my father, who once told me, "Who knows why the fuck anything happens?

one of the first rules of police work is that trouble will always come looking for you, so there's no point looking for it.

THE TROUBLE with the old boy network is you can never be really sure whether it's switched on or not and whether it's operating in your interest or some other old boy's.