18 quotes
It’s always better to tell a half-truth than a half-lie.
Moon Over Soho (2011)
It’s a sad fact of modern life that if you drive long enough, sooner or later you must leave London behind.
Moon Over Soho (2011)
Anything that can go wrong with armed men in the light can go twice as wrong in the dark.
Moon Over Soho (2011)
It’s no fun looking down on people if you can’t let them know you’re above them.
Moon Over Soho (2011)
Have you noticed that about journalists—all they really want to talk about is themselves.
Moon Over Soho (2011)
When you’re a musician free is a magic number.
Moon Over Soho (2011)
First law of gossip—there’s no point knowing something if somebody else doesn’t know you know it.
Moon Over Soho (2011)
I’m an old-fashioned copper–I don’t believe in breaking the laws of thermodynamics.
Moon Over Soho (2011)
The difference between stripping and burlesque, as far as I could tell, was class.
Moon Over Soho (2011)
Ghosts, I was thinking, memories—I wasn’t sure there was a difference.
Moon Over Soho (2011)
Blackstone’s Police Operational Handbook recommends the ABC of serious investigation: Assume nothing, Believe nothing, and Check everything.
Moon Over Soho (2011)
There were screams and yells from the street below as people saw what was happening. There would be lots of phone-camera footage on the news that night from people with more media-savvy than brains.
Moon Over Soho (2011)
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.
Moon Over Soho (2011)
I rang her and left a message identifying myself and giving an impression of urgency without actually saying anything concrete. Never record anything you wouldn’t want turning up on YouTube is my motto.
Moon Over Soho (2011)
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.
Moon Over Soho (2011)
Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that.
—Dizzy Gillespie
Moon Over Soho (2011)
Why would someone use magic to kill a jazz musician in the middle of his set? I mean, I have my problems with the New Thing and the rest of the atonal modernists but I wouldn’t kill someone for playing it–at least not if I wasn’t trapped in the same room.
Moon Over Soho (2011)
Five hundred years ago the notoriously savvy Henry VIII discovered an elegant way to solve both his theological problems and his personal liquidity crisis—he dissolved the monasteries and nicked all their land. Since the principle of any rich person who wants to stay rich is, never give anything away unless you absolutely have to, the land has stayed with Crown ever since.
Moon Over Soho (2011)