"The perennial problem for retailers the world over are the customers. Not only do they clutter up the shop, but they also demand to be reminded of the title of a book they read a review about in the Telegraph, given directions to The Lion King, helped to find a book their mum will like and, occasionally, purchase some actual merchandise. All of this customer-facing activity gets in the way of the shelving, merchandising, sticking, destickering, table pyramiding and stock returning that is necessary for the smooth operation of a modern bookshop."

"“He was a Parisian,” he said. “You can never be sure what Parisians believe in—beyond Paris of course.”"

"Policing is about moving from the unknown to the known and then further—to the provable."

"Anyone who’s taken statements from multiple witnesses to the same event will know how malleable memory is."

"After that I was up and ready for action. It might have been a Saturday, but below the rank of chief inspector weekends are an entirely notional concept."

"It’s a police rule of thumb that anything involving members of the public takes twice as long as you think it will."

"God, I thought, Mum’s going to be upset if the rapture arrives and Jesus looks like Robin Williams."

"Nobody had a clue what had happened, so the pundits were out in force, explaining how the riot was caused by whatever sociopolitical factor their latest book was pushing. It was certainly a searing indictment of some aspect of modern society—if only we knew what."

"What was a billionaire supposed to do? There was a limit to the effectiveness of charity, and paying more taxes just meant the government wasted your money on bureaucracy and cushy jobs for civil servants."

"Miss Karmargi who’d been my Religious Education teacher at school. An avowed atheist who’d once said that she respected all religions equally—“which is more than can be said for most religions,” she’d added."

"When you’re a musician free is a magic number."

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

"“Unless you believe it was a coincidence that Melvin the Rat turned up at a party we were hosting.” Actually I thought it probably was, but 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."

"“When you say shades, what do you mean?” I asked. “Do you mean Fae?” “I mean everything that’s not normal,” said Mrs. Chin. “Like New Jersey,” said Stephen."

"“You can’t die of jazz,” said Dr. Walid. “Can you?” I thought of Fats Navarro, Billie Holiday, and Charlie Parker who, when he died, was mistaken by a coroner for a man twice his real age. “You know,” I said, “I think you’ll find you can.”"

"“Cyrus was a musician?” I asked. “He played the alto sax.” “And he played jazz?” Another brief smile. “Is there any other kind of music?”"

"Nothing beats a long wait at a bus stop as a reality check."

"The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back. —Anonymous"

"He’d obviously wanted to tell someone about it for a long time and I was a convenient ear. I get that a lot. Stephanopoulos calls it my secret weapon. “It’s that vacant expression,” she said. “People just want to fill the empty void.”"

"The police can live with looking corrupt, bullying, or tyrannical, but looking stupid is intolerable. It has a tendency to undermine public faith in the forces of Law and is deleterious to public order."

"“I’m a magician, I am,” he said. “I can see things that are really there.”"

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

"“The timing might not be significant,” I said. “Just because two things happen at the same time doesn’t mean they’re related.” Abigail gave me a withering look. But everyone assumes causation when they should be thinking coincidence, and correlation when they should be asking whether Twitter is really a reliable source of information."

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

"“Are you smarter than me?” “I’ll answer that when you give me a working definition of intelligence.”"

"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."

"There were a couple of mentions of drones, but the assumption was that they were operated by the police, the gangs, space lizards or all three at once. The media were continuing their comforting lack of interest in things that didn’t fit their various agendas."

"“There’s no glamour in infrastructure,” he said as he filled our glasses again. “Steve and wee little William, right? They make stuff everyone uses every day but nobody thinks about the plumbing until it goes wrong.”"

"The prisons are full of people with poor impulse control and a lack of foresight."

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

"Inside he had the soul of an accountant, but alas none of the facility with numbers."

"Police doctrine is, even if you’re waiting for someone to do something violent to your suspect, you should de-escalate the situation because at the very least a peaceful solution produces a ton less paperwork."

"From a policing point of view, 3-D printers were your classic new technology. Everybody knew they were going to be used by criminals for something, but nobody was sure what."

"It was already one of the hazards of being police that you became suspicious of the everyday. You didn’t have to spend much time on the job before realising that professional criminals are comparatively rare and that crime is something committed by ordinary people."

"“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."

"Like young men from the dawn of time, I decided to choose the risk of death over certain humiliation."

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

"This is what’s known as operational flexibility, and definitely not making it up as you go along."

"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."

"The first rule of Big Brother is that Big Brother is never watching when you want him to."

"Now I was used to it, the bell-like silence was louder than ever, and I was starting to get undertones of orange blossom and incense. You have to be careful with this stuff or you begin to sound like a wine taster—with about the same amount of meaningless bollocks."

"Cambden the nourice of antiquitie, And lanterne unto late succeeding age"

"It is thanks to Camden that we ascribe to Queen Elizabeth a consistent policy of via media rather than an inconsequent series of unresolved conflicts and paralysed indecisions."

"The character of Queen Elizabeth as it emerged in the pages of Camden's history was that of a moderate who ruled her heart with her head, and who sought the good of her country above all other felicities. Camden admired Elizabeth's prudence, respected her judgment, and never underestimated the responsibility that she ultimately bore for the security and prosperity of England. The likeness of Camden's portrait of Elizabeth has, in general, been borne out by modern historical research. Camden never doubted Elizabeth's greatness. And although he was sympathetic, he was not adulatory; some practices he condoned as necessary, but without approving them. Many later historians have drawn on Camden's account of Elizabeth. Few have shown themselves superior to Camden in good judgment, impartiality, and respect for truth."

"[The Annales] is a work whose subtlety many modern historians would envy, and whose total picture of ‘The Elizabethan Age’, in war, trade, exploration and the arts, has fixed our concept of the reign right down to the present day; in fact, it was Camden who first viewed the later sixteenth century as a great explosion of the national genius, controlled and orchestrated by the great queen."

"When man, in the exercise of his mechanical function, puts together a structure, he does it by adding one part to another, so that they lie side-by-side in space, and the whole is made up of all the parts added together. But when nature constructs, she follows a different principle – one which man also, when he is functioning not as mechanic but as artist or poet, must strive to follow. In an organic structure it will be found that the parts interpenetrate and, as it were, express each other in a characteristic way, and that often a single part will seem at the same time to be the whole, or to be potentially the whole. And this is the structural principle which, at all levels from the highest to the lowest, Anthroposophy reveals to us as present in the universe itself."

"[My aim is] to restore Britain to its Antiquities, and its Antiquities to Britain, to renew the memory of what was old, illustrate what was obscure, and settle what was doubtful, and to recover some certainty in our affairs."

"We’re not a very professional bunch under our roof. We’re amateurs. We just make life up as we go along. I think that sense is very important to try to keep alive"

"A practical observation that I’ve made over the years with ancient beloved people in my life—real spiritual youth is gained latterly."