Screenwriters From England

"“Come on then,” yelled Beverley, for whom de-escalation was something that happened to other people."

"“Any abductions?” I asked. “Loads,” he said. “But none verified.”"

"His big claim to fame, beyond writing the first ever vampire novel, is his work attempting to classify where whatever it is that powers magic comes from. He called it potentia because there’s nothing quite like Latin for disguising the fact you’re making it up as you go along."

"“Of course now I realize it was a telepathic compulsion.” I was afraid to ask from who—but I had to know. “From aliens,” she told me. “Aliens?” “I’m not mad, you know,” she said. “I’ve been sectioned. They put me in for four weeks’ ‘evaluation’ and at the end the top shrink calls me into her office and looks me in the eye and says, ‘you’re saner than I am—go away.’” “Did you tell them about the aliens?” I asked. “I may have glossed over some of the details,” she said."

"And having made sure my attention was focused in one direction the universe, which likes a good laugh, smacked me in the face from the other side."

"The media always calls this sort of thing senseless, but the motive made sense—it was just stupid, is what it was."

"Guleed went home because she has, she says, a deep and mystical understanding of the work-life balance. A concept I once tried explaining to Nightingale with the aid of the big whiteboard in the visitors' lounge. I think he grasped it in the end, and said he was all in favour as long as I understood that this in no way applied to apprentices."

"Nightingale ignored that thread because when the suspect - I mean interviewee - wants to talk about something it's a good idea to frustrate them a little bit. That way you can get more later than they intended. Seawoll calls it the 'fuck all the cows' interview approach."

"Charing Cross Road was once the bookselling heart of London and disreputable enough to avoid the multinational chains in their unceasing quest to turn every street of every city into a clone of every other."

"We did not tell him we were witch hunting, as that sort of thing tends to cause alarm."

"I didn’t bother calling Nightingale on the mobile I’d got him for Christmas because he only turns it on when he wants to call someone—the new technology being strictly there for his convenience, not anybody else’s."

"“Fortunately,” said Nightingale, “seeing isn’t always believing.”"

"As Conan the Barbarian famously said, “That which does not kill us does not kill us.”"

"A lot of people have died in the Underground, through accidents, stupidity, or suicide. All the one-unders whose dying wish had been to make other people late for work."

"Was it better to die in the illusion of sunshine and warmth or face death in a cold darkness of reality? Was it better to die in happy ignorance or terrified knowledge? The answer, if you’re a Londoner, is that it’s better not to die at all."

"“I want assurances,” said Zach. “You can have my word,” I said. “No disrespect, Peter,” he said, “but I don’t want a promise from the monkey, I want it from the organ grinder.”"

"Half-caste, I thought. I hadn’t heard that one in a while. Not since Mum fell out with Aunty Doris, who having grown up in Jamaica in the 1950s regarded political correctness as something that happened to other people."

"It was a good plan, and like all plans since the dawn of time, this would fail to survive contact with real life."

"Dedication: This book is dedicated to all the people who get up and do something about it, whatever it is and however small the thing is they do."

"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."

"Technically, you don't have to have a corpse to convict for murder but detectives always feel better when they've found your actual victim—they're superstitious like that."

"Keeping a secret always makes the police suspicious. And while we’re willing to believe in the possibility of a totally innocent explanation, we never think that’s the way to bet."

"“You know how some people work at being stupid?” she asked. “If you give them a clear, common sense choice they give it a lot of thought and then choose stupid.”"

"We were pretty certain we knew roughly where he’d been, but members of the public have an unnerving tendency to switch straight from lying to your face to telling you what they think you want to hear—with no intervening period of veracity at all."

"Even hardened professional villains consent to be policed. This is clear from the way they complain that nonces, rapists and bankers get shorter sentences than decent ordinary criminals. It’s the same with all the other criminals, the weekend shoplifters, the drunk drivers, the overexcited protesters and executives who pop in to the loo for a quick snort. When it’s their stuff that goes walkies, or their car that’s damaged, when their kids go missing and their briefcases gets snatched, they all seem to be pretty consensual about the police. Everyone consents to the police. It’s just the operational priorities they argue about."

"I find you get two types of police, those that don’t want to know and those that do. Unfortunately, dealing with things you don’t want to know about is practically a definition of policing."

"Nightingale says that conspiracies of silence are the only kind of conspiracies that stand the test of time."

"I am a goddess, Peter, a creature of temperament and whimsy. I’m supposed to be arbitrary and mercurial—it’s practically my job description."

"“How about this then, Peter,” she said. “You’ve been part of something that no wizard has ever been part of before. You know something that’s not in their books.” I wanted to say that lots of things weren’t in the libraries of the wise, including plate tectonics, molecular biology and the complete works of J. K. Rowling. But she’d probably say that I was missing the point."

"Taking a statement from anyone can be a long process on account of the fact that your average member of the public wouldn’t know the truth if it donned a pink tutu and danced in front of them singing the Chicken Song."

"The Daily Mail had the scoop but the media had caught the smell of blood in the water and twenty-four-hour news outlets were running the bulletin every half an hour, with a teaser on the quarter in case your attention span was that short."

"“They’ve got me reviewing statements during the initial investigation,” he said. “Occasionally I punch myself in the face to keep awake.”"

"This was the Wyldewood, spelt with a Y, that once covered the Island of Britain and would again, once the pesky tool-using primates had done the decent thing and exterminated themselves."

"I’ll say this for the Queen. She was brave—or possibly stupid. It’s easy to mistake the two."

"Now, I have - as Beverley says - views about architecture. But there's modern stuff I like. The Gherkin, the Lloyd's Building, even the Shard - despite the nagging feeling I get that Nazgûl should be roosting at the top. But the truth is that in the case of One Hyde Park my boy Sir Roger was definitely just putting in the hours for the pay check. It's not ugly as such...it's just not anything in particular."

"In home furnishing terms, past a certain point, more money doesn’t get you anything except an increase in insurance premiums."

"God, money is so wasted on the rich."

"For police officers, “close relative” frequently rhymes with “prime suspect.”"

"“Somebody’s lying,” I said, which got me a look of amused indulgence from Stephanopoulos and a snort from Seawoll. Of course somebody was lying—we were the police—somebody was always lying to us."

"Ask not for whom the buck stops, I thought, it stops for thee."

"“Flexible,” I said. “Meaning we’re making it up as we go along.”"

"Hyde Park Corner is what happens when a bunch of urban planners take one look at the grinding circle of gridlock that surrounds the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and think—that’s what we want for our town."

"A promise is a promise, or as Nightingale put it, “either your word is good or it’s worthless.”"

"“Nice,” said Abigail. “Very plausible.” “Yeah, but just because it’s plausible doesn’t mean it’s true.”"

"The railway hit Harrow on the Hill in 1880 and it’s been downhill ever since, culminating in one of those formless red brick shopping centres which artfully combines a complete lack of aesthetic quality with a total disregard for the utilitarian function for which it is built."

"Here the bland 1930s art deco stylings of the station gave way to the horror that was the 1980s where every public building was deliberately crafted to look as much like a urinal as possible."

"When you’re four, forever and ever can mean yesterday."

"The house was neat and well cared for, but to my eye the Heywoods were losing the battle against the four-year-old agent of entropy who was living with them"

"You see, the trouble with detectives is that they’re detectives and are literally trained not to believe anything they haven’t verified themselves."

"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 climbable 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."