Quote

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

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Ben Aaronovitch
Age: 60
Author
Businessperson
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Inner and Outer London
Life
Conversation
Already
Reluctantly
Boys
Initiated
Either
Conversations
Effort
Measured
Tell
Uncomfortable
Really
Adults
Things
Series

More quotes by Ben Aaronovitch

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What do you think you're doing?
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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.
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This is your brain on magic.
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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.
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This I know for a fact: the reason African women have children is so that there's someone else to do the housework.
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The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with and ology tacked on the end.
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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.
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My dad once told me that the secret to a happy life was never to start something with a girl unless you were willing to follow wherever it led. It's the best piece of advice he has ever given me, and probably the reason I was born.
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It's a sad fact of modern life that if you drive long enough, sooner or later you must leave London behind.
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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.
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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.
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I gave the prescribed Metropolitan Police first greeting. Oi! I said What do you think you're doing?
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Holy paranormal activity, Nightingale - to the Jag mobile.
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...good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport - like base-jumping or crocodile-wrestling.
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Questions would be asked. Answers would be ignored.
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Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence.
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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.
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If you find yourself talking to the police, my advice is to stay calm but look guilty it's your safest bet.
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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.
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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.
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