Top 250 Ben Aaronovitch Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “He was calling it an atonic seizure because, even if he didn’t know why it had happened, it was important to give it a cool name.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

52. “Missing kids are tough cases. I mean, murder is bad but at least the worst has already happened to the victim – they’re not going to get any deader. Missing kids come with a literal deadline, made worse by the fact that you don’t get to learn the timing until it’s too late.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

53. “It was chintz but not the cat-lady chintz I was used to. Perhaps it was Mrs. Bellrush’s manner or steely blue eyes but I got the distinct impression that this was aggressive chintz, warrior chintz, the kind of chintz that had gone out to conquer an Empire and still had the good taste to dress for dinner. Any IKEA flat-pack that showed its face around here was going to be kindling.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

54. “I didn’t think that Herefordshire Social Services would be best pleased about me dumping a poorly socialised pre-teen with mind control powers on them.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

55. “First law of gossip – there’s no point knowing something if somebody else doesn’t know you know it.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

56. “There was a statue on the lawn outside the institute of a woman, hand on breast, looking mournfully upwards as if contemplating the death of a loved one and the amount of paperwork it was bound to cause.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

57. “It’s important for a man to know his limitations, and my limitations started at moving to Peckham and hanging around with yardies, postcode wannabes and those weird, skinny white kids who don’t get the irony in Eminem.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

58. “I ended up learning magic because you can’t trust the British to keep to an agreement over the long term.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

59. “Because were were both probationary constables, an experienced PC had been left to supervise us – a responsibility he diligently pursued from an all-night cafe on St. Martin’s Close.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

60. “People are conditioned by the media to think that black women are all shouting, and head shaking and girlfriending and “oh no you didn’t” and if they’re not sassy, then they’re dignified and downtrodden and soldiering on and “I don’t understand why folks just can’t get along.” But if you see a black woman go quiet the way Tyburn did, the eyes bright, the lips straight and the face still as a death mask, you have made an enemy for life, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred. Do.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

61. “An argument,” said Dr. Walid. “It’s an argument of wizards.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

62. “Holy paranormal activity, Nightingale – to the Jag mobile.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

63. “People still use the phrase hoisted by his own petard.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

64. “A lifetime of disappointment had made him cynical, but you don’t stay an activist without a core of stubborn belief that things can get better – it’s a bit like being a Spurs supporter really.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

65. “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.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

66. “The Fire Brigade recognise only two kinds of people at a fire, victims and obstacles, and if you don’t want to be either it’s best to stay back.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

67. “Well, our victim had a thirst for knowledge,” said Stephanopoulos. “He was a student at St. Martins College.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

68. “Actually I’d always thought he sat in the library with a slim volume of metaphysical poetry until the commissioner called him on the bat phone and summoned him into action. Holy paranormal activity, Nightingale – to the Jag mobile.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

69. “Fish and chip night was a Kumar family tradition that dated back to when Jaget was courting his wife and they used to meet in the last white English-owned fish and chip shop in Wembley on the basis that none of their relatives would go in there. “It.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

70. “Every male in the world thinks he’s an excellent driver. Every copper who’s ever had to pick an eyeball out of a puddle knows that most of them are kidding themselves.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

71. “In 1851 Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage met up for the last time when they, along with six million other people, visited the Great Exhibition together. Housed in a fantastic purpose-built glass pavilion in Hyde Park called the Crystal Palace, it was designed to showcase the achievements of British industry and all the stuff we’d nicked from overseas. Babbage, who never let an occasion get in the way of a grievance, was less impressed because not one of his amazing engines was on display.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

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

— Ben Aaronovitch

73. “Librarianship... it’s not for the faint-hearted.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

74. “You have to call me Master.” “Master?” “That’s the tradition,” said Nightingale. I said the word in my head and it kept on coming out massa.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

75. “I had found the upper limit of my courage. Fortunately for me, there is no known lower limit to human stupidity.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

76. “The designer had probably been going for Turkish Bath but had hit Czech Porn Shoot instead.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

77. “But Smithy,” said Stephanopoulis. “I don’t believe in respectable businessmen. I’ve been a copper for more than five minutes. And the constable here doesn’t think you’re respectable either, because it happens he is a card-carrying member of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party and so regards all forms of property as a crime against the proletariat.” That one caught me by surprise and the best I could manage was “Power to the people.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

78. “Ever since mankind stopped wandering around aimlessly and started cultivating its own food, society has been growing more complex. As soon as we stopped sleeping with our cousins and built walls, temples and a few decent nightclubs, society became too complex for any one person to grasp all at once, and thus bureaucracy was born.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

79. “The rise and fall of Teresa Cornelys proves three things: that the wages of sin are high, that you should “just say no” to opera, and that it’s always wise to diversify your investment portfolio.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

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

— Ben Aaronovitch

81. “The Metropolitan Police Service is still, despite what people think, a working-class organisation and as such rejects totally the notion of an officer class. That is why every newly minted constable, regardless of their educational background, has to spend a two-year probationary period as an ordinary plod on the streets. This is because nothing builds character like being abused, spat at and vomited by members of the public.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

82. “He was one of those people who constantly seems to be having a conversation with someone other than the person he’s actually talking to – presumably someone much more politically committed. And interested.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

83. “There are people who have been touched by, let’s call it for the sake of argument, magic to the point where they’re no longer entirely people even under human rights legislation. Nightingale calls them the fae but that’s a catch-all term like the way the Greeks used the word “barbarian” or the Daily Mail uses “Europe.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

84. “Hyde Park Corner is what happens when a bunch of urban planners take one look at the grinding circle of gridlock that surrounds the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and think – that’s what we want for our town.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

85. “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”.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

86. “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.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

87. “You don’t actually know enough about me to insult me properly.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

88. “He threw a fireball at me. I threw a chimney stack at him – that’s the London way.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

89. “Dominic tooled up five minutes later in a ten-year-old Nissan pickup truck that had been painted a non-standard khaki, dipped in dried mud up to the wheel arches and then randomly smacked with a sledgehammer to give it that Somali Technical look. I found myself checking to see if there was a mount for a fifty-caliber machine gun in the back.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

90. “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.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

91. “It’s one of those weird truths you learn early on as police that quite a high percentage of the public have all the survival instinct of a moth in a candle factory. They run the wrong way, they refuse to move, some will run toward the danger, and others will instantly whip out their phones and take footage.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

92. “It’s a police mantra that all members of the public are guilty of something, but some members of the public are more guilty than others.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

93. “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.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

94. “Here’s a comforting thought for you, Peter,′ he said. ‘However long you may live, the world will never lose its ability to surprise you with its beauty.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

95. “I don’t mind getting drunk, but there always comes a moment in the evening when I find myself watching myself bumping into things and thinking – I’m bored of this, can I have full control of my brain back, please?”

— Ben Aaronovitch

96. “The Folly had last been refurbished in the 1930s when the British establishment firmly believed that central heating was the work, if not of the devil per se, then definitely evil foreigners bent on weakening the hardy British spirit.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

97. “He’s been banned,’ said Lesley. ‘Until he passes the advanced driver’s course.’ ‘Is that because you crashed that ambulance into the river?’ asked Abigail.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

98. “He called it potentia because there’s nothing quite like Latin for disguising the fact you’re making it up as you go along.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

99. “This book is dedicated to all the people who get up and do something about it, whatever “it” is and however small the thing it is they do.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

100. “For operational reasons,” says Indigo, “you should call me Gaspode.” “Gaspode?” “That’s my cover name,” says Indigo. “Part of my legend.”

— Ben Aaronovitch