Top 250 Ben Aaronovitch Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “From then on, it was even twistier B-roads through a country so photgenically rural that I half expected to meet Bilbo Baggins around the next corner – providing he’d taken to driving a Nissan Micra.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

152. “Carnivorous unicorns, I thought.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

153. “My dad had once told me that the secret to a happy life was never to start something with a girl unless you were willing to follow wherever it leads.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

154. “When you’re a boy your life can be measured out as a series of uncomfortable conversations reluctantly initiated by adults in an effort to tell you things that you either already know or really don’t want to know.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

155. “With a grunt he levered himself to his feet, causing the chair to bang against the bookcase behind him and set the various objet d’bollocks rattling.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

156. “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

157. “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

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

— Ben Aaronovitch

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

— Ben Aaronovitch

160. “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

161. “If you find yourself talking to the police, my advice is to stay calm but look guilty; it’s your safest bet.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

162. “You can’t die of jazz,” said Dr. Walid. “Can you?” I thought of Fats Navarro, Billie Holiday, and Charlie Parker who, when he died, was mistaken by a coroner for a man twice his real age. “You know,” I said, “I think you’ll find you can.” Jazz.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

163. “Given that all three of us were Londoners, we paused a moment to carry out the ritual of the “valuation of the property.” I guessed that, given the area, it was at least a million and change. “Million and a half, easy,” said Carey. “More,” said Guleed. “If it’s freehold.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

164. “Like young men from the dawn of time, I decided to choose the risk of death over certain humiliation.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

165. “The narrow hallway was lined with framed photographs while the far end was dominated by a faux movie poster for Gone with the Wind starring Ronald Reagan sweeping Margaret Thatcher off her feet while a mushroom cloud bloomed behind them. She promised to follow him to the end of the world. He promised to organise it.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

166. “Zach Palmer, who was half human and half – we weren’t really sure what, including the possibility that the other half might be human as well.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

167. “The media are doing this, not because they have a sinister motive, but because they love to feel that they are influencing events. That’s why they hate politicians so much, because politicians have direct power and they do not.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

168. “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.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

169. “Boss,’ I said into my Airwave. ‘It’s getting needlessly metaphysical out here.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

170. “This is your brain on magic.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

171. “The stairs down to the scene were so narrow that we had to wait for a herd of forensics types to come up before we could go down. There’s no such thing as a full-service forensics team. It’s very expensive, so you order bits of it up from the Home Office like a Chinese takeout. Judging by the number of noddy suits filing past us Stephanopoulis had gone for the super-deluxe meal for six with extra egg fried rice. I was, I guessed, the fortune cookie.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

172. “Americans, who intellectually knew the rest of the world existed but didn’t really believe it.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

173. “Rule of policing number one – when something good falls into your lap, pass it up the chain of command as quickly as possible before something else bad can happen.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

174. “Bollocks, I thought, or testiculi or possibly testiculos if we were using the accusative.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

175. “She had a narrow face which could fall into an expression of belligerent suspicion of such power that her teachers said they could feel it even when they were hiding in the staff room. It was her stubbornness, coupled with this expression – and routine everyday low grade racism – that kept her constantly on the verge of a school suspension.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

176. “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.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

177. “I was pleased to see that even back in the glory days of the Folly people left their mugs of tea on their magical textbooks.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

178. “I woke in the hour before dawn, stuck in that strange state where the memory of your dreams is still powerful enough to motivate your actions.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

179. “Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that’ Dizzy Gillespie.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

180. “What have we got to lose?” I said. Nightingale looked up and gave me a strange, sad smile. “Oh, everything, Peter,” he said. “But then, such is life.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

181. “You know there’s always things in life that you have to do despite the fact that you know for certain the outcome is going to be messy, painful, humiliating, or all three.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

182. “I don’t know why Nightingale was so surprised – I barely knew four and a half spells and you couldn’t have got me to give it up, and that’s despite close brushes with death by vampire, hanging, malignant spirit, riot, tigerman, and the ever-present risk of overdoing the magic and getting a brain aneurysm.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

183. “Stop, police!’ I shouted, on the basis that one of these days it was going to have the right effect.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

184. “If you ask any copper why they stick at a job which exposes them to abuse from everyone from petty criminals all the way down to government ministers, they’ll say it’s the variety.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

185. “I don’t like it, Peter,” he’d said after the morning briefing. “It’s all too complicated. Chorley has proved masterful at deceiving us in the past.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

186. “Magic is not about passion or anger or the power of friendship. Magic is about control, focus, and being able to concentrate when you’re drowning to death.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

187. “Abigail gave me a withering look. But everyone assumes causation when they should be thinking coincidence, and correlation when they should be asking whether Twitter is really a reliable source of information.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

188. “She was staring at us over the top of a pair of completely pointless sunglasses and her phone was playing what I now recognised as The Day the World Turned Day-Glo by X-Ray Specs.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

189. “He should have been wearing a black roll-neck jumper with a faux military insignia on his chest, but obviously Skinner hadn’t been reading the script and had turned out for the final confrontation in jeans, black Nike trainers and a loose blue pinstripe collarless shirt. He was, at least, sitting in a swivel chair in front of the steady unblinking lights of the HPC rack. But he didn’t say, ‘Ahh, Mr Grant, we meet again,’ which showed a shocking lack of etiquette on his part.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

190. “Phillip told me proudly that his mum had ceased to be a practicing Catholic the day after he came out. “She says she will go back to the Church the day it apologizes,” he said.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

191. “I took the swab using the collection kit that I’d borrowed from Dominic who, I realized, had left the Boy Scout scale behind and was now verging on Batman levels of crazy preparedness.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

192. “I heard a woman scream with rage and frustration and then grunt like a tennis player.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

193. “Then you throw the bloody thing as far as you can, hopefully outside the area of immediate magical effect, where two minutes later it basically phones the Met control room and screams help, help, serious magic shenanigans here – send help – preferably Nightingale.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

194. “All I can say is that he was found dead this morning and we’re treating it as suspicious.” It was the standard formula for these things, although a dead body at Baker Street Station was going to come in a close second to “commuter anger as snow shuts down London” on the lunchtime news. Assuming the media didn’t find a way to link both stories.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

195. “According to this thing I saw on the internet, cats and dogs use expressions on us that they don’t use on each other. This being on account of the fact that we effectively co-evolved together. So unless sheep are susceptible to a look of long-suffering patience, I’m going to say that the one Ziggy gave me was reserved for humans.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

196. “Taking a statement from anyone can be a long process on account of the fact that your average member of the public wouldn’t know the truth if it donned a pink tutu and danced in front of them singing the Chicken Song. This.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

197. “We’re walking down to the east side of the Model Boating Pond because I reckon there’ll be fewer people to notice that I’m carrying a talking fox around my neck.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

198. “Then he smiled at me and for that moment, and just that moment, I forgave him everything – everything – because now I knew what joy looked like and I was part of it.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

199. “My dad was a fairy,” said Zach. “And by that I don’t mean he dressed well and enjoyed musical theatre.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

200. “Apparently after six days baking pigs and herding bricks, the inhabitants would kick back with a spot of cock-fighting, bullbaiting, and ratting. It was the sort of place an adventurous gentleman might venture only if he didn’t mind being beaten, rolled, and catching an exciting venereal disease.”

— Ben Aaronovitch