Quotes from Ben Aaronovitch

Or as my dad always says: it only becomes a social problem when the working man joins in.

It never seemed to occur to Heather that Francisca might be a refugee from the dim and distant past—not even when she fainted at her first sight of an airliner. I'd have sussed it on the first day—which just goes to show why more science fiction should be included in the National Curriculum.

I did feel a 'something', like a catch in the silence at the moment of creation.

Caratacus suffered the double indignity of being taken to Rome in chains and having an opera written about him by Elgar.

He'd obviously wanted to tell someone about it for a long time and I was a convenient ear. I get that a lot. Stephanopoulos calls it my secret weapon. "It's that vacant expression," she said, "people just want to fill the empty void".

People don't like to speak ill of the dead even when they're monsters, let alone when they're loved ones. People like to forget any bad things that someone did and why should they remember?

and part of a successful relationship is learning to live with your beloved's questionable taste.

You don't actually know enough about me to insult me properly.

Science doesn't have all the answers, you know." "It's got all the best questions, though," I said.

I didn't tell him that it was all stored as binary information on rapidly spinning shiny discs, partly because I'd have to look up the details myself, but mostly because by the time he'd understood the technology it would have been replaced by something else.

Who made the 999 call?" "Dunno," said Purdy. "Mobile, probably." It's officers like Purdy that give the Metropolitan Police its sterling reputation for customer service that makes us the envy of the civilised world.

I didn't ask why anybody would want to risk the electric two-step on the tracks because, as police, all three of us knew that there wasn't anything so stupid that somebody wouldn't try it sooner or later.

Don't get me wrong, I like the countryside. In fact, some of my best friends are geographical features.

What's it a charm for?' she asked. The man thought about this for a moment. 'It's your basic all-enveloping protection charm,' he said, his hands describing a cupped circle in the air. 'For protection against...' 'Envelopes?' said Abigail.

This is why you have procedure, training and drill, so that you do things when your brain is too shocked to think for itself—ask any soldier.

As a typical Londoner, Gurcan had a high tolerance for random thoughtlessness; after all, if you live in the big city there's no point complaining that it's a big city, but even that tolerance has its limit and the name of that limit is 'taking the piss'.

Even in the 1980s your average young archaeologist would have had difficulty raising capital for a house. I knew this because it's one of the things archaeologists will tell you about, at length, at the slightest provocation.

Whoever had converted the warehouse into offices and flats had obviously done it back in the carefree sixties, when lifts were for wimps and people with disabilities hadn't been invented.

I saw nothing suspicious—which is unusual. A copper can usually find something suspicious if they look hard enough.

I'd been warned in advance, so I'd given it some thought. When it was my turn and I stood up and called for life, liberty and peace and managed to sit down before I added a hard-boiled egg to the list.

And they can hold a sustained conversation, which indicates human levels of intelligence. Although, to be fair, I've met some bare stupid people who could have a conversation, so that might not prove anything.

when the government decided that in the light of an increased security threat what London really needed was a smaller police force.

I sighed and went back to my book, in which Morgoth nicked the eponymous jewels and had away with them back to Angbad. Sorry mate, I thought, not my jurisdiction. Did you have them insured? Whereupon Fëanor gets a crime number and a leaflet about being on guard against theft and the wiles of the personification of evil.

There was also a great absence of people, including behind the mahogany-topped reception desk. Now, there's a time when an unlocked premises is a positive boon to a police officer as in – I was just looking to ascertain the whereabouts of the proprietor when I stumbled across the Class A controlled substances which were in plain sight in the bottom drawer of a locked desk in an upstairs office, M'lord.