Rivers Of London Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Rivers Of London. Here they are! All 100 of them:

So you don't ever get angry at him?" Jem laughed out loud. "I would hardly say that. Sometimes I want to strangle him." "How on earth do you prevent yourself?" "I go to my favorite place in London," said Jem, "and I stand and look at the water, and I think about the continuity of life, and how the river rolls on, oblivious of the petty upsets in our lives." Tessa was fascinated. "Does that work?" "Not really, but after that I think about how I could kill him while he slept if I really wanted to, and then I feel better.
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
For a terrifying moment I thought he was going to hug me, but fortunately we both remembered we were English just in time. Still, it was a close call.
Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
In the winter she curls up around a good book and dreams away the cold.
Ben Aaronovitch (Broken Homes (Rivers of London, #4))
Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since – on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to displace with your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!
Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)
The clever people at CERN are smashing particles together in the hope that Doctor Who will turn up and tell them to stop
Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
Carved above the lintel were the words SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST. Science points east, I wondered? Science is portentous, yes? Science protests too much. Scientific potatoes rule. Had I stumbled on the lair of dangerous plant geneticists?
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
My Dad says that being a Londoner has nothing to do with where you're born. He says that there are people who get off a jumbo jet at Heathrow, go through immigration waving any kind of passport, hop on the tube and by the time the train's pulled into Piccadilly Circus they've become a Londoner.
Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
And this is the east shore?" Sadie asked. "You said something about that in London--my grandparents living on the east shore." Amos smiled. "Yes. Very good, Sadie. In ancient times, the east bank of the Nile was always the side of the living, the side where the sun rises. The dead were buried west of the river. It was considered bad luck, even dangerous, to live there. The tradition is still strong among... our people." Our people?" I asked, but Sadie muscled in with another question. So you can't live in Manhattan?" she asked. Amos's brow furrowed as he looked across at the Empire State Building. "Manhattan has other problems. Other gods. It's best we stay separate.
Rick Riordan (The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, #1))
Could it have been anyone, or was it destiny? When I'm considering this I find it helpful to quote the wisdom of my father, who once told me, "Who knows why the fuck anything happens?
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
No, the last thing she cared about was whether people were staring at the boy and girl kissing by the river, as London, it's cities and towers and churches and bridges and streets, circled all about them like the memory of a dream. And if the Thames that ran beside them, sure and silver in the afternoon light, recalled a night long ago when the moon shone as brightly as a shilling on this same boy and girl, or if the stones of Blackfriars knew the tread of their feet and thought to themselves: At last, the wheel comes to a full circle, they kept their silence.
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3))
Destiny is just the inevitable result of choice, from the choices that came before us to the choices we make. They are a river that can only flow in one direction.
Alex London (Proxy (Proxy, #1))
You put a spell on the dog," I said as we left the house. "Just a small one," said Nightingale. "So magic is real," I said. "Which makes you a...what?" "A wizard." "Like Harry Potter?" Nightingale sighed. "No," he said. "Not like Harry Potter." "In what way?" "I'm not a fictional character," said Nightingale.
Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London (Rivers of London, #1))
Questions would be asked. Answers would be ignored.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
This is why magic is worse even than quantum physics. Because, while both spit in the eye of common sense, I've never yet had a Higgs bosun turn up and try to have a conversation with me.
Ben Aaronovitch (Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3))
Fuck me, I thought. I can do magic.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
TWENTY bridges from Tower to Kew - Wanted to know what the River knew, Twenty Bridges or twenty-two, For they were young, and the Thames was old And this is the tale that River told:
Rudyard Kipling
Holy paranormal activity, Nightingale - to the Jag mobile.
Ben Aaronovitch (Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3))
Conflict resolution,' said Nightingale. 'Is this what they teach at Hendon these days?' 'Yes, sir,' I said. 'But don't worry, they also teach us how to beat people with phone books and the ten best ways to plant evidence.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
Being a seasoned Londoner, Martin gave the body the "London once-over" - a quick glance to determine whether this was a drunk, a crazy or a human being in distress. The fact that it was entirely possible for someone to be all three simultaneously is why good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport - like BASE jumping or crocodile wrestling.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
The motto of West African cooking is that if the food doesn't set fire to the tablecloth the cook is being stingy with the pepper.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
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 (Foxglove Summer (Rivers of London, #5))
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 (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
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 (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
If you find yourself talking to the police, my advice is to stay calm but look guilty; it's your safest bet.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
Are they really gods?" "I never worry about theological questions," said Nightingale. "They exist, they have power and they can breach the Queen's peace - that makes them a police matter.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
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 (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
My dad was a fairy," said Zach. "And by that I don't mean he dressed well and enjoyed musical theatre.
Ben Aaronovitch (Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3))
He was from Yorkshire, or somewhere like that, and like many Northerners with issues, he'd moved to London as a cheap alternative to psychotherapy.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
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 (Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3))
We were aiming for a cross between Kafka and Orwell, which just goes to show how dangerous it can be when your police officers are better read than you are.
Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
First law of gossip - there's no point knowing something if somebody else doesn't know you know it.
Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
Keep breathing,’ I said. ‘It’s a habit you don’t want to break.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
On the plus side, there were no rioters in sight but on the minus side this was probably because everywhere I looked was on fire.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
I wasn't sure I found that particularly reassuring, but in the event of an attack I wasn't going to be as much use as Thomas 'Oh sorry, was that your Tiger Tank?' Nightingale.
Ben Aaronovitch (Broken Homes (Rivers of London, #4))
Zap,’ I said. ‘That’s the technical term for it, is it? What do you call someone who’s been zapped?’ ‘Mr. Crispy,’ said Kumar.
Ben Aaronovitch (Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3))
But . . .” Dominic floundered around for a bit before pointing at me accusingly. “You said that there’s weird shit, but it normally turns out to have a rational explanation.” “It does,” said Beverley. “The explanation is a wizard did it.
Ben Aaronovitch (Foxglove Summer (Rivers of London, #5))
If you just warn people, they often simply ignore you. But if you ask them a question, then they have to think about it. And once they start to think about the consequences, they almost always calm down. Unless they're drunk, of course. Or stoned. Or aged between fourteen and twenty-one. Or Glaswegian.
Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
I looked into the literature on this," said Nightingale, "and it wasn't very helpful." "There's a literature about this?" "You'd be amazed, Constable, about what there's a literature on.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
The first rule about a black woman’s hair is you don’t talk about a black woman’s hair. And the second rule is you don’t ever touch a black woman’s hair without getting written permission first.
Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
Like young men from the dawn of time, I decided to choose the risk of death over certain humiliation.
Ben Aaronovitch (Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3))
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 (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
I was tempted to tell her it was because we were British and actually had a sense of humour, but I try not to be cruel to foreigners, especially when they're that strung out.
Ben Aaronovitch (Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3))
I have an idea," I said. "This better not be a cunning plan," said Leslie. Nightingale looked blank, but at least it got a chuckle from Dr Walid.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
I left in a hurry before he could change his mind, but I want to make it clear that at no point did I break into a skip
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
One of the the things she most liked about the city -apart from all its obvious attractions, the theatre, the galleries, the exhilarating walks by the river- was that so few people ever asked you personal questions.
Julia Gregson (East of the Sun)
My mum translated this in her head to "witchfinder," which was good because like most West Africans, she considered witchfinding a more respectable profession than policeman.
Ben Aaronovitch (Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3))
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 (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
Officially she was there to liaise with me on the case, but really she was there for the wide-screen TV, takeaways and the unresolved sexual tension.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, I thought. For they are soggy and hard to light.
Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
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 (Foxglove Summer (Rivers of London, #5))
It was a good plan, and like all plans since the dawn of time, this would fail to survive contact with real life.
Ben Aaronovitch (Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London #3))
...good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport - like base-jumping or crocodile-wrestling.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
The night may be dark and full of terrors, I thought, but I've got a big stick.
Ben Aaronovitch (Foxglove Summer (Rivers of London, #5))
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 (Foxglove Summer (Rivers of London, #5))
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 (The Hanging Tree (Rivers of London, #6))
If you ask any police officer what the worst part of the job is, they will always say breaking bad news to relatives, but this is not the truth. The worst part is staying in the room after you've broken the news, so that you're forced to be there when someone's life disintegrates around them. Some people say it doesn't bother them - such people are not to be trusted.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence.
Ben Aaronovitch (Broken Homes (Rivers of London, #4))
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 (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
It's a sad fact of modern life that if you drive long enough, sooner or later you must leave London behind.
Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
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 (Lies Sleeping (Rivers of London, #7))
So that's when I came up with the most ridiculous plan since I'd decided to take a witness statement from a ghost. It was a plan so stupid that even Baldrick would have rejected it out of hand.
Ben Aaronovitch (Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3))
Not being invited in is one of the boxes on the “suspicious behavior” bingo form that every copper carries around in their head along with “stupidly overpowerful dog” and being too quick to supply an alibi. Fill all the boxes and you too could win an all-­expenses-paid visit to your local police station.
Ben Aaronovitch (Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3))
..sudden attack of culture snobbery is a common affliction among policemen of a certain rank and age; it’s like a normal midlife crisis only with more chandeliers and foreign languages.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
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 (Foxglove Summer (Rivers of London, #5))
Americans, who intellectually knew the rest of the world existed but didn’t really believe it.
Ben Aaronovitch (False Value (Rivers of London, #8))
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 (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
You shouldn’t make jokes about these things,” she said. “Science doesn’t have all the answers, you know.” “It’s got all the best questions, though,
Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
I saw a dark void under the platform and had just enough time to think: "Fuck me he's a earthbender.
Ben Aaronovitch (Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3))
Can you sacrifice people?' I asked. 'Take their magic that way?' 'Yes,' he said. 'But there's a catch.' 'What's the catch?' 'You get hunted down even unto the ends of the Earth and summarily executed.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
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 (Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3))
What's the biggest thing you've zapped with a fireball?' I asked. 'That would be a tiger,'said Nightingale. 'Well don't tell Greenpeace,' I said. 'They're an endagered species.' 'Not that sort of tiger,' said Nightingale. 'A Panzer-kampfwagen sechs Ausf E.' I stared at him. 'You knocked out a Tiger tank with a fireball?' 'Actually I knocked out two,' said Nightingale. 'I have to admit that the first one took three shots, one to disable the tracks, one through the driver's eye slot and one down the commander's hatch - brewed up rather nicely.
Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
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 (The Hanging Tree (Rivers of London, #6))
Blackstone's Police Operational Handbook recommends the ABC of serious investigation: Assume nothing, Believe nothing, and Check everything.
Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
the rules of English grammar are largely an artificial construct with little or no bearing on the language as it is spoke.
Ben Aaronovitch (Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3))
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 (Foxglove Summer (Rivers of London, #5))
Boss,’ I said into my Airwave. ‘It’s getting needlessly metaphysical out here.
Ben Aaronovitch (The Hanging Tree (Rivers of London, #6))
I think becoming a wizard is about discovering what's real and what isn't.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
He threw a fireball at me. I threw a chimney stack at him - that's the London way.
Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
We'd considered wearing uniform but Lesley said, what with her mask and everything, she'd look like a plastic cop monster from Doctor Who. I managed to restrain myself from telling her their real name.
Ben Aaronovitch (Broken Homes (Rivers of London, #4))
Now, personally, I'd have been happier driving an armored personnel carrier in through the front door. But since we're the Met, and not the police department of a small town in Missouri, we didn't have one.
Ben Aaronovitch (The Hanging Tree (Rivers of London, #6))
The media response to unusual weather is as ritualized and predictable as the stages of grief. First comes denial: "I can't believe there's so much snow." Then anger: "Why can't I drive my car, why are the trains not running?" Then blame: "Why haven't the local authorities sanded the roads, where are the snowplows, and how come the Canadians can deal with this and we can't?" This last stage goes on the longest and tends to trail off into a mumbled grumbling moan, enlivened by occasional ILLEGALS ATE MY SNOWPLOW headlines from the *Daily Mail....*
Ben Aaronovitch (Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3))
I can’t say what made me fall in love with Vietnam - that a woman’s voice can drug you; that everything is so intense. The colors, the taste, even the rain. Nothing like the filthy rain in London. They say whatever you’re looking for, you will find here. They say you come to Vietnam and you understand a lot in a few minutes, but the rest has got to be lived. The smell: that’s the first thing that hits you, promising everything in exchange for your soul. And the heat. Your shirt is straightaway a rag. You can hardly remember your name, or what you came to escape from. But at night, there’s a breeze. The river is beautiful. You could be forgiven for thinking there was no war; that the gunshots were fireworks; that only pleasure matters. A pipe of opium, or the touch of a girl who might tell you she loves you. And then, something happens, as you knew it would. And nothing can ever be the same again.
Graham Greene (The Quiet American)
Nothing mystical about destiny. Destiny is just the inevitable result of choice, from the choices that came before us to the choices we make. They are a river that can only flow in one direction.
Alex London (Proxy (Proxy, #1))
As I stepped onto the gloomy landing a word formed in my mind: two syllables, starts with a V and rhymes with dire. I froze in place. Nightingale said that everything was true, after a fashion, and that had to include vampires, didn’t it? I doubted they were anything like they were in books and on TV, and one thing was for certain — they absolutely weren’t going to sparkle in the sunlight.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
As soon as we stopped sleeping with our cousins and build 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. A bureaucracy breaks the complexity down into a series of interlocking systems. You don't need to know how the systems fit together, or even what function your bit of the system has, you just perform your bit and the whole machine creaks on.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
The mark was from the glue that once held a folder into which a library card would have fitted back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the earth and computers were the size of washing machines.
Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest. Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds. Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time — as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look. The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.
Charles Dickens (Bleak House)
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 (Foxglove Summer (Rivers of London, #5))
If you overdo it, there are consequences. What kind of consequences? Strokes, brain hemorrhages, aneurysms... How do you know when you have overdone it? When you have a stroke, brain hemorrhage or an aneurysm.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
I'd been too intent on the room to hear her coming up the stairs. 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 (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
The industrial towns were far away, a smudge of smoke and misery hidden by the curve of the earth's surface. Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wild flowers, the deep meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow-moving streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the blue policemen—all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.
George Orwell (Homage to Catalonia)
The Metropolitan Police has a very straightforward approach to murder investigations, not for them the detective’s gut instinct or the intricate logical deductions of the sleuth savant. No, what the Met likes to do is throw a shitload of manpower at the problem and run down every single lead until it is exhausted, the murderer is caught or the senior investigating officer dies of old age.
Ben Aaronovitch (Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3))
When I was a kid I used to drink from the tap all the time. I'd run back into the flat all hot and sweaty from playing and didn't even bother putting it in a glass, just turned the tap on and stuck my mouth underneath it. If my mom caught me doing it she used to scold me, but my dad just said that I had to be careful. 'What if a fish jumped out?' he used to say. 'You'd swallow it before you knew it was there.' Dad was always saying stuff like that and it wasn't until I was seventeen that I realised it was because he was stoned all the time.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
However, the majority of women are neither harlots nor courtesans; nor do they sit clasping pug dogs to dusty velvet all through the summer afternoon. But what do they do then? and there came to my mind’s eye one of those long streets somewhere south of the river whose infinite rows are innumerably populated. With the eye of the imagination I saw a very ancient lady crossing the street on the arm of a middle-aged woman, her daughter, perhaps, both so respectably booted and furred that their dressing in the afternoon must be a ritual, and the clothes themselves put away in cupboards with camphor, year after year, throughout the summer months. They cross the road when the lamps are being lit (for the dusk is their favourite hour), as they must have done year after year. The elder is close on eighty; but if one asked her what her life has meant to her, she would say that she remembered the streets lit for the battle of Balaclava, or had heard the guns fire in Hyde Park for the birth of King Edward the Seventh. And if one asked her, longing to pin down the moment with date and season, but what were you doing on the fifth of April 1868, or the second of November 1875, she would look vague and say that she could remember nothing. For all the dinners are cooked; the plates and cups washed; the children sent to school and gone out into the world. Nothing remains of it all. All has vanished. No biography or history has a word to say about it. And the novels, without meaning to, inevitably lie. All these infinitely obscure lives remain to be recorded, I said, addressing Mary Carmichael as if she were present; and went on in thought through the streets of London feeling in imagination the pressure of dumbness, the accumulation of unrecorded life, whether from the women at the street corners with their arms akimbo, and the rings embedded in their fat swollen fingers, talking with a gesticulation like the swing of Shakespeare’s words; or from the violet-sellers and match-sellers and old crones stationed under doorways; or from drifting girls whose faces, like waves in sun and cloud, signal the coming of men and women and the flickering lights of shop windows. All that you will have to explore, I said to Mary Carmichael, holding your torch firm in your hand.
Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own)
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 (The Hanging Tree (Rivers of London, #6))
Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read since I first [met you]. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since,—on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation, I associate you only with the good; and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may.
Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)
Right from the start Abigail used to moan and fidget as her hair was relaxed or braided or thermally reconditioned, but her dad was determined that his child wasn’t going to embarrass him in public. That all stopped when Abigail turned eleven and calmly announced that she had ChildLine on speed‑dial and the next person who came near her with a hair extension, chemical straightener, or, God forbid, a hot comb, was going to end up explaining their actions to Social Services.
Ben Aaronovitch (Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3))
We can't have your people fighting each other," I said. The 'royal we' is very important in police work; it reminds the person you're talking to that behind you stands the mighty institution that is the Metropolitan Police, robed in the full majesty of the law and capable, in manpower terms, of invading a small country. You only hope when you're using that term that the whole edifice is currently facing in the same direction as you are.
Ben Aaronovitch (Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1))
The police never saw a noun they didn't want to turn into a verb, so it quickly became "to action", as in you action me to undertake a Falcon assessment, I action a Falcon assessment, a Falcon assessment has been actioned and we all action in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine. This, to review a major inqurity is to review the list of "actions" and their consequences, in the hope that you'll spot something that thirty-odd highly trained and experienced detectives didn't.
Ben Aaronovitch (Foxglove Summer (Rivers of London, #5))
I am already far north of London, and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is forever visible, its broad disk just skirting the horizon and diffusing a perpetual splendour. There—for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators—there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe. Its productions and features may be without example, as the phenomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle and may regulate a thousand celestial observations that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent forever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind, to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus)