Tales from the Folly Quotes

“I have reason to believe that you are consorting with a spirit in contravention of the Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft and Dealing with Evil and Wicked Spirits 1604,’ I said. The Witchcraft Act had actually been superseded in 1736 but I find quoting it helps break the ice on the doorstep.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Tales from the Folly: A Rivers of London Short Story Collection

“I found that when people are nursing a grievance it’s a waste of time trying to explain the ubiquitous nature of coincidence in the universe. People always want things to happen for a reason.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Tales from the Folly: A Rivers of London Short Story Collection

“It’s not the book that’s important,’ I said. ‘It’s the reading”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Tales from the Folly

“It’s an iron rule of mine that I never argue correlation versus causation in the middle of the night, especially when I had an alternative option.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Tales from the Folly: A Rivers of London Short Story Collection

“As revenge I popped back and fetched Toby. When Ms Winstanley objected, I told her that Toby was a highly trained police dog. She gave Toby a sceptical look. ‘Trained in what?’ she asked. ‘Many strange things,’ I said. ‘Of which the uninitiated is not meant to know.’ ‘Are,’ said Ms Winstanley. ‘“Are not meant to know”, not “is”.’ And that is why I don’t normally argue with librarians.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Tales from the Folly: A Rivers of London Short Story Collection

“We were just getting bored enough to consider playing ‘how much do you reckon that house is worth?’—a favourite game amongst Londoners”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Tales from the Folly: A Rivers of London Short Story Collection

“Back in the good old days of 1911 when London’s streets were covered in horse manure and traffic congestion could give you a parasitic infection as well as a headache, the Post Office decided to utilise two new cutting edge technologies—electric rail and the Greathead Shield Tunnel Boring System—to create a mini railway for the post. It would run from Whitechapel to Paddington and allow the mail to glide from one side of the city to the other, untroubled by traffic jams, inclement weather or, during the occasional world war, high explosives. It opened in 1924 and was only closed in 2003 because ‘being awesome’ no longer registered on the Royal Mail’s balance sheet.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Tales from the Folly: A Rivers of London Short Story Collection

“But why here?’ he asked plaintively. ‘Well, it’s a book shop,’ I said. ‘So what?’ asked the manager. ‘My last branch didn’t have a local god in it. None of the other managers have ever mentioned anything like this—I’m sure I would have remembered. Why here?’ Because, I thought, the cockfighting ring on your top floor provided a reservoir of vestigia which interacted with all those young minds reading books downstairs, and a spirit of place formed like a pearl around a bit of grit. Only I wasn’t going to tell him that. Because not only couldn’t I prove any of it, it was also a bloody dreadful simile. Then the children’s section had been moved upstairs and the poor little deity started to feel unloved. ‘Just one of those things,’ I said.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Tales from the Folly: A Rivers of London Short Story Collection

“I cracked open Juvenal and laboured through the last part of Book III: Flattering Your Patron Is Hard Work. It had been my set text for months and had led me to think of the Romans as a bunch of Bernard Manning wannabes with an empire.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Tales from the Folly: A Rivers of London Short Story Collection

“Ah, yes, librarianship,’ said Ms Winstanley. ‘It’s not for the faint hearted.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Tales from the Folly: A Rivers of London Short Story Collection

“Or, more seriously, should you allow books to be damaged, death by librarian.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Tales from the Folly

“That’s the curse of librarianship. If your library is of any quality at all, then its collection is going to outpace your manpower.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Tales from the Folly

“Tell me that wasn’t a spider?’ said Ms Winstanley in a deceptively calm tone. ‘Can’t have been,’ I said. ‘Thank god for that,’ she said. ‘Can’t stand spiders.’ ‘It was too big,’ I said. ‘You can’t scale an exoskeleton up that far.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Tales from the Folly

“You let them watch the Fassbender again,’ I said to Victor ‘Didn’t you?”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Tales from the Folly

“Lady Ty looked at Fleet and they both giggled. I hoped that it was the alcohol because I didn’t like the idea of the Goddess of the River Tyburn giggling—it was disturbing on so many levels.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Tales from the Folly: A Rivers of London Short Story Collection

“It’s because I’m a rat,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it?’ ‘You’re not really a rat,’ I said. ‘I’m a rat and this is a violation of the human rights act.’ I really wish members of the public would bother to read that bloody act before quoting from it. ‘No it isn’t,’ I said. ‘Apart from anything else, if you really are a rat, then the Human Rights Act doesn’t apply.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Tales from the Folly: A Rivers of London Short Story Collection