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Ben Aaronovitch
224 quotes
“It was already one of the hazards of being police that you became suspicious of the everyday. You didn’t have to spend much time on the job before realising that professional criminals are comparatively rare and that crime is something committed by ordinary people.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wondered, not for the first time, whether all farmers become obsessed or if only obsessive people become farmers.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you run everywhere you miss stuff that you might have been better off noticing—just saying.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Are there aliens?” Simon asks Indigo. “Not that I know of,” she says. “Unless you count cats.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Have fun,” she says and releases me. “Make trouble.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You make a plan without intelligence—you might as well not have a plan at all.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Are you a practitioner?” I ask. “A wizard?” “Sorceress, my dear,” she says. “Practitioner is how the gentlemen have styled themselves, as quacks now style themselves as physicians.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“None of those choices seemed likely, but if I’ve learned one thing on the job, it is that a coincidence can kill someone just as easily as malice.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You’re probably wondering why I decided to grace you with my presence,” he said. Which was true, since DCIs spend most of their life in their offices or, worse, in other people’s offices and conference rooms. “Playing,” Seawoll once said, “pin the fucking buzzword on the sodding flow chart.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My mum is game for any branch of Christianity that involves singing and hellfire,” I said. “She likes churches so much she switches to a new one twice a year.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Giant squids are pretty alien,” I said. “Not to another giant squid,” said Beverley.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But this was the eighteenth century, when life was cheap and ambition unlimited.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“According to my therapist, attaching conditionals to your past is a classic distancing technique indicating an unwillingness to face your memories directly. Or, I pointed out, it could be a rhetorical device designed to add a humorous note to enliven a story. To which she said, “Or both.” You can’t win with therapists, you know. And even if you do, they just tell you it’s part of the process.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t like the fact that all we have so far is that somebody did something to somebody at some time which may or may not have some fucking connection so some other people who we’re not sure still exist.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Isn’t the internet wonderful?” she said. “Better than dragons any day.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The trouble with turning a blind eye is that people often take the opportunity to punch you in the face.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is what’s known as operational flexibility, and definitely not making it up as you go along.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now I was used to it, the bell-like silence was louder than ever, and I was starting to get undertones of orange blossom and incense. You have to be careful with this stuff or you begin to sound like a wine taster—with about the same amount of meaningless bollocks.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dr. Walid’s theory was that the news media and their consumers unconsciously shied away from events that didn’t fall within the narrow band of their expectations. Shot by a jealous lover or stabbed by a body were narratives they could run with. Killed in an unspecified manner with no witnesses, no CCTV, and no obvious motive probably piqued their curiosity, but would it get clicks or sell papers? More importantly, would it fit the news agenda their organization worked to?”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Desperate people do desperate things,” said Spencer-Talbot. “Perhaps if we all did more to make things less desperate, then perhaps there would be less violence.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is a terrible work,” I said. “Why did you do it?” “The usual reasons,” said the Magister. “I told myself it was piety and duty to the Church, but a thousand years of contemplation will batter down the doors of one’s own delusions.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’ve been told to take the day off,” said Leslie. “Compassionate—don’t get on media’s radar—leave.” That I could understand. A family annihilation involving charismatic rich people was going to be a news editor’s dream story. Once they’d picked over the gruesome details, they could extend the mileage by asking what the tragic death of the Coopertown family told us about our society and how this tragedy was an indictment of modern culture/secular humanism/political correctness/the situation in Palestine—delete where applicable. About the only thing that could improve the story would be the involvement of a good-looking blonde WPC out, I might add, unsupervised on a dangerous assignment.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most people don’t see half of what’s in front of them. Your visual cortex does a shit load of imaging processing before the signal even gets to your brain, whose priorities are still checking the ancestral savannah for dangerous predators, edible berries and climbable trees. That’s why a sudden cat in the night can make you jump and some people when distracted, can walk right out in front of a bus. Your brain just isn’t interested in those large moving chunks of metal or the static heaps of brightly colored stuff that piles up in drifts around us. Never mind all that, says your brain, it’s those silent fur-covered merchants of death you’ve got to watch out for.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even hardened professional villains consent to be policed. This is clear from the way they complain that nonces, rapists and bankers get shorter sentences than decent ordinary criminals. It’s the same with all the other criminals, the weekend shoplifters, the drunk drivers, the overexcited protesters and executives who pop in to the loo for a quick snort. When it’s their stuff that goes walkies, or their car that’s damaged, when their kids go missing and their briefcases gets snatched, they all seem to be pretty consensual about the police. Everyone consents to the police. It’s just the operational priorities they argue about.”
Ben Aaronovitch (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source