“There’s paperwork for magic? asked Vanessa. “Not so glamorous now, eh?” I said. — Ben Aaronovitch

Gaston did betray an abstracted quality that might have been the result of magic. But was more likely down to consuming, I suspected, a tremendous amount of recreational chemicals.

The more power something has, the less the actual facts matter.

As police you can live with the violence, the squalor and the stupidity—it’s the waste of people’s futures that really grinds you down.