Home > Work > Broken Homes (Rivers of London, #4)
1 " 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 (Rivers of London, #4)
2 " 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. "
3 " 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. "
4 " In the winter she curls up around a good book and dreams away the cold. "
5 " 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. "
6 " 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. "
7 " Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence. "
8 " 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. "
9 " Fuck me,' I said to Toby. 'We're living in Isengard. "
10 " 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. "
11 " 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 "
12 " Peter Grant,’ I said. ‘Recent arrival, slacker and man of very little fame. "
13 " 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. "
14 " 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. "
15 " 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. "
16 " In 1666, following an unfortunate workplace accident, the city of London burnt down. "
17 " He was one of those people who constantly seems to be having a conversation with someone other than the person he’s actually talking to—presumably someone much more politically committed. And interested. "
18 " 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. "
19 " The rest of the band faded down to almost nothing while my dad did his best Bill Evans impression — except hopefully without the untreated hepatitis. "
20 " Inside, it was very dark but I am, if not exactly a master, then definitely an apprentice in the secret arts. And as such I laugh in the face of darkness. "
