Broken Homes Quotes

“In the winter she curls up around a good book and dreams away the cold.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“That which does not kill us,” I said, “has to get up extra early in the morning if it wants to get us next time.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“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

“Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“The Folly had last been refurbished in the 1930s when the British establishment firmly believed that central heating was the work, if not of the devil per se, then definitely evil foreigners bent on weakening the hardy British spirit.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“Fuck me,' I said to Toby. 'We're living in Isengard.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“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

“I texted Nightingale to let him know our change in disposition and then I picked up my Pliny, because nothing says stuck all alone in your flat like a Roman know-it-all”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“Peter Grant,’ I said. ‘Recent arrival, slacker and man of very little fame.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“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, Broken Homes

“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, Broken Homes

“A lifetime of disappointment had made him cynical, but you don’t stay an activist without a core of stubborn belief that things can get better – it’s a bit like being a Spurs supporter really.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“This book is dedicated to all the people who get up and do something about it, whatever “it” is and however small the thing it is they do.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“What's it a charm for?' she asked.

The man thought about this for a moment.

'It's your basic all-enveloping protection charm,' he said, his hands describing a cupped circle in the air. 'For protection against...'
'Envelopes?' said Abigail.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“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 climable 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, Broken Homes

“It's a police mantra that all members of the public are guilty of something, but some members of the public are more guilty than others.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“I didn’t tell him that it was all stored as binary information on rapidly spinning shiny discs, partly because I’d have to look up the details myself, but mostly because by the time he’d understood the technology it would have been replaced by something else.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“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.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“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, Broken Homes

“It’s not like me and Lesley are inconspicuous,’ I’d said. Nightingale had winced, as he always does, at my incorrect use of the accusative pronoun but I think I’m beginning to wear him down.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“I had found the upper limit of my courage. Fortunately for me, there is no known lower limit to human stupidity.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“In 1666, following an unfortunate workplace accident, the city of London burnt down.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“We were suffering a standard gray London drizzle, the sort that makes it clear that it can keep it up all day if needs be.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“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, Broken Homes

“Landscaping is the great cardinal sin of modern architecture. It's not your garden, it's not a park - it's a formless patch of grass, shrubbery and the occasional tree that exists purely to stop the original developer's plans from looking like a howling concrete wilderness.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“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.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“I called it the Voight-Kampff test even though only Dr. Walid got the joke—and he had to look it up on Wikipedia.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“She came skipping down the central path, bringing with her the warmth of the sun. The yellow silk glowed, driving back the mist and with her came the smell of salt and the crash of gunpowder and the crack of canvas under strain.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“Through the mist the sun was a wavering disc kissing the shadowy arches of Waterloo Bridge.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“God bless busybody community matriarchs, and all that sail in them.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes