Aaronovitch Ben Quotes

“It’s a good thing that the sheep are all so law abiding”

“Five hundred years ago the notoriously savvy Henry VIII discovered an elegant way to solve both his theological problems and his personal liquidity crisis —he dissolved the monasteries and nicked all their land.”

“First law of gossip - there's no point knowing something if somebody else doesn't know you know it.”

“You know there's always things in life that you have to do despite the fact that you know for certain the outcome is going to be messy, painful, humiliating, or all three.”

“This I know for a fact: the reason African women have children is so that there's someone else to do the housework.”

“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.”

“In the winter she curls up around a good book and dreams away the cold.”

“The clever people at CERN are smashing particles together in the hope that Doctor Who will turn up and tell them to stop”

“The world was different before the war,' he said. 'We didn't have this instantaneous access to information that your generation has. The world was a bigger, more mysterious place - we still dreamed of secret caves in the Mountains of the Moon, and tiger hunting in the Punjab.”

“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.”