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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.

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

First law of gossip—there’s no point knowing something if somebody else doesn’t know you know it.

Ghosts, I was thinking, memories—I wasn’t sure there was a difference.

As property prices started rising, developers snatched up bomb sites and derelict buildings and erected the shapeless concrete lumps that have made the ’70s the shining beacon of architectural splendor that it is.

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.

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

Low sample size—one of the reasons why magic and science are hard to reconcile.

Have you noticed that about journalists—all they really want to talk about is themselves.

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.

“There’s more to life than just London,” said Nightingale.

“People keep saying that,” I said. “But I’ve never actually seen any proof.”

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