Top 250 Ben Aaronovitch Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “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

102. “I turned right onto the A410 which went north with suspiciously Roman straightness toward Aymestrey, which is less a village than a diorama of the last six hundred years of English vernacular architecture stretched along either side of the road.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

103. “The white boys knew they had my attention now, but hesitated – that’s the trouble with being a racist in the white heartlands, you don’t get a lot of practical experience.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

104. “It took the Fire Brigade a day and a half to secure the remains of the house enough to recover Crew Cut’s body, which was described by Dr Jennifer Vaughan as ‘suffering from crush trauma’ and by Dr Walid as ‘mostly flat’.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

105. “CO19, the Met’s firearms unit, whose unofficial motto is, “Guns don’t kill people, we kill people with guns.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

106. “Whatever you see, he’d said, take as long a look as you need to get used to it, to accept it, and then move on as if nothing has changed.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

107. “The word “bollocks” is one of the most beautiful and flexible in the English language. It can be used to express emotional states ranging from ecstatic surprise to weary resignation in the face of inevitable disaster.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

108. “Libertarians and criminals complain about the surveillance state when they see a camera. Police officers complain about it when they don’t.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

109. “The house had probably cost a couple of million quid, with its two stories plus loft conversion, red brick, and detailing on the porch roof that hinted at Arts and Crafts without actually making it over the finishing line. It was at least mercifully free of pebble-dash and fake half-timbering. They’d retained the original sash windows but installed the venetian blinds that have replaced net curtains as the genteel response to sharing your neighborhood with other human beings.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

110. “In some households you only have to turn up three times before you’re expected to make your own tea, draw up a chair in front of the telly and call the cat a bastard.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

111. “Is that your professional opinion?” “Yes.” “Which as usual,” said Seawoll, “is as about as useful as a chocolate teapot.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

112. “I have reason to believe that you are consorting with a spirit in contravention of the Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft and Dealing with Evil and Wicked Spirits 1604,’ I said. The Witchcraft Act had actually been superseded in 1736 but I find quoting it helps break the ice on the doorstep.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

113. “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.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

114. “Ethically challenged magical practitioners,” I said.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

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

— Ben Aaronovitch

116. “Your ghost,′ she said, ‘Nicholas Nickleby. Do you think he might still be at the crime scene?’ ‘How should I know?’ I said. ‘I don’t even believe in ghosts.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

117. “I nodded absently as I made a note of the pub. The Rising Sun drinking establishment exists right on the fringes of the demi-monde – not being nearly as antique or mysterious as it pretends to be.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

118. “It’s a sad fact of modern life that sooner or later you will end up on YouTube doing something stupid. The trick, according to my dad, is to make a fool of yourself to the best of your ability.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

119. “In 1666, following an unfortunate workplace accident, the city of London burnt down.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

120. “NIGHTINGALE AND I did what all good coppers do when faced with a spare moment in the middle of the day – we went looking for a pub.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

121. “You don’t get to be a senior investigating officer unless you have a degree in scepticism, an MA in distrust and your CV lists suspicious bastard under your hobbies.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

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

— Ben Aaronovitch

123. “Relax,” I said. “This is just first contact – we’re only going to exchange names and check he’s the right orientation.” “And what do you think the right orientation is?” asked Victor. “The one that’s facing in your direction,” I said.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

124. “He was a Parisian,’ he said. ‘You can never be sure what Parisians believe in – beyond Paris of course.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

125. “Leslie said that the capacity not to notice a traditional Dutch folk-dancing band walk up behind you was not a survival characteristic in the complex fast-paced world of the modern policing environment. I’d like to point out that I was trying to give directions to a slightly deaf tourist at the time and anyway it was a Swedish dance troupe.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

126. “It’s a truism in policing that witnesses and statements are fine, but nothing beats empirical physical evidence. Actually it isn’t a truism because most policemen think the word ‘empirical’ is something to do with Darth Vader, but it damn well should be.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

127. “Whatever was in the sandwiches, you didn’t want them getting too warm and going off, or starting to smell, or spontaneously mutating into a new life form.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

128. “The world was different before the war,′ he said. ‘We didn’t have this instantaneous access to information that your generation has. The world was a bigger, more mysterious place – we still dreamed of secret caves in the Mountains of the Moon, and tiger hunting in the Punjab.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

129. “Because who is more oppressed,” exclaimed Leslie. “Those that seek nothing but entitlements for themselves or those that claim for everything, social security, housing benefit, disability and pay for nothing.” One.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

130. “The British have always been madly overambitious, and from one angle it can seem like bravery, but from another it looks suspiciously like a lack of foresight.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

131. “What are my options?” she asked as I climbed into the driver’s seat. “Meaningless euphemisms at one end and your full-on Unseen University at the other,” I said. “The Unseen University is a bit like Hogwart’s – ” Stephanopoulos cut me off. “I have read some Terry Pratchett,” she said.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

132. “Morris being an old word for dance, by the way – it’s amazing what you pick up on the job.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

133. “She was slender and dressed like an Edwardian maid, complete with a starched white bib apron over a full black skirt and white cotton blouse. Her face didn’t fit her outfit, being too long and sharp-boned, with black almond-shaped eyes. Despite her mob cap she wore her hair loose, a black curtain that fell to her waist. She instantly gave me the creeps and not just because I’ve seen too many Japanese horror films.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

134. “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.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

135. “It gave me “the eye” – the fearsome gaze that sheepdogs use to keep their charges in line. But I gave it “the look” – the stare that policemen use to keep members of the public in a state of randomized guilt.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

136. “Seen something?” asked Nightingale, making me jump. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “Not on this river,” said Nightingale. “Not even Blake thought that was possible.” We.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

137. “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.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

138. “Most archaeology in London these days is rescue archaeology – projects designed to preserve as much as possible from the relentless cash-driven redevelopment. It’s not a new problem. Ask a medievalist about Victorian cellars or an Iron Age specialist about medieval ploughing – but take snacks, because you’re going to be there for a while.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

139. “Pictures of Cheam adorn the walls of planning offices of every Home County to serve as an awful warning.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

140. “When it’s still – when it’s the cellar of a house, or a ring of mushrooms in a forest or a gun emplacement outside Offenburg – it’s called one of two things. If it remains static and unchanging then we call it a despair. If it seeks to extend its influence then it is a malignancy. Or as the Director puts it – a despair will suck you in, but a malignancy is coming to get you.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

141. “Policing is about moving from the unknown to the known and then further – to the provable.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

142. “Seawoll sat in the executive leather operator’s chair behind the desk wearing a dangerously stretched noddy suit that made him look like the Michelin Man’s slightly deflated older brother.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

143. “There’s more to life than just London,” said Nightingale. “People keep saying that,” I said. “But I’ve never actually seen any proof.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

144. “And I personally don’t so much believe in it as have to massage its feet when I go home at night.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

145. “Jeremy Beaumont-Jones had been lucky enough to be born rich. He wasn’t in the mad oligarch class but once you’re past a certain point, the sheer weight of your money sucks in wealth like a financial singularity. If you’re sensible enough not to blow it on race horses, cocaine or musical theatre, then it becomes a perpetual-motion money making machine.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

146. “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.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

147. “Stephanopoulos was waiting for me inside. She was a short, terrifying woman whose legendary capacity for revenge had earned her the title of the lesbian officer least likely to have a flippant remark made about her sexual orientation. She was stocky, and had a square face that wasn’t helped by a Sheena Easton flat-top that you might have called ironic postmodern dyke chic, but only if you really craved suffering.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

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

— Ben Aaronovitch

149. “If you’re afraid of wolves,’ said Varvara Sidorovna, ’don’t go to the woods.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

150. “He asked if we were really ghost hunting, and I said we were. “What, like officially?” “Officially secret,” I said because discretion is supposed to be, if not our middle name, at least a nickname we occasionally answer to when we remember.”

— Ben Aaronovitch