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Ben Aaronovitch

Ben Aaronovitch Quotes

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Famous Ben Aaronovitch Quotes

“I asked if I could borrow Gilead's but she gave me a funny look. So funny I started laughing uncontrollably. When I couldn't stop myself I clamped my hand over my mouth and went outside. The thing about having a stress reaction is that even when you know you're having a stress reaction that knowledge doesn't seem to do you any good. I found a doorway across the road where a parked police sprinter van blocked the view from the rest of the street. I lent against the door and let myself slipped down until I was sitting with my back to it. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing until the giggles stopped.”

StressPtsdPolice Trauma
Book:Lies Sleeping
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“This is a speech we've all heard before. From the con artists who aren't like the burglars, who aren't like the armed robbers, who only ever broke a bone if the victim had it coming and the murderers who made 'one mistake' and are forced to pay for it for the rest of their lives. They want to know what you're doing about the real criminals, the rapists and the paedophiles. Who want to know why you're wasting resources on them when we should be tackling female genital mutilation or political corruption”

CrimeMoral Relativism
Book:Rivers of London: Detective Stories #2
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“The problem with the so-called bloody surveillance state is that it’s hard work trying to track someone’s movements using CCTV – especially if they’re on foot. Part of the problem is that the cameras all belong to different people for different reasons. Westminster Council has a network for traffic violations, the Oxford Street Trading Association has a huge network aimed at shop-lifters and pickpockets, individual shops have their own systems, as do pubs, clubs and buses. When you walk around London it is important to remember that Big Brother may be watching you, or he could be having a piss, or reading the paper or helping redirect traffic around a car accident or maybe he’s just forgotten to turn the bloody thing on.”

FantasyMysteryCamerasPolice ProceduralBig BrotherSurveillance SocietySecurity Cameras
Book:Broken Homes
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“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.”

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Book:Foxglove Summer
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“Even at ten o’clock in the morning it was going to be full of members of the public. Rich, influential members of the public, many of them foreign, a lot of them with some level of diplomatic immunity. ‘What I’m saying here,’ Seawoll had said, ‘is try to limit the amount of damage you do to none fucking whatsoever.’ I don’t know where I got this reputation for property damage, I really don’t”

Property Damage
Book:The Hanging Tree
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“What frustrated me was the thought that with three thousand years of history someone in China, some monk in a monastery halfway up a mountain, must have developed a magic kata, a physical expression of formae. Or at least have got close enough to explain all those legendary swordsmen and their inexplicable desire to roost on the tops of bamboo trees.”

YearsEnoughDesireThreeMagicTreeExpressionThousandMountainChinaFrustratedThousand YearsMonkHalfwayLegendaryInexplicableMonasteriesBambooRoostSwordsman
Book:Broken Homes
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“The general public have a warped view of the speed at which an investigation proceeds. They like to imagine tense conversations going on behind the venetian blinds and unshaven, but ruggedly handsome, detectives working themselves with single-minded devotion into the bottle and marital breakdown. The truth is that at the end of the day, unless you've generated some sort of lead, you go home and get on with the important things in life - like drinking and sleeping, and if you're lucky, a relationship with the gender and sexual orientation of your choice.”

IfsImportantEndsHomeChoicesSleepViewsBehindsImagineTruth IsLuckyConversationImportant ThingsDrinkingGenderSpeedDevotionThe End Of The DayBottlesThings In LifeInvestigationHandsomeTenseDetectivesBreakdownOrientationGeneral Public
Book:Moon Over Soho
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“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.”

PeopleThinkingYearsStillsTwoCharacterClassStreetsPeriodsMembersOrdinaryPoliceNotionEducationalBackgroundsDespiteRejectsTwo YearsOfficersWorking ClassOrganisationSpatsMetropolitanEducational Background
Author:Ben Aaronovitch
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