Alan Bradley Quotes

One of the marks of a truly great mind, I had discovered, is the ability to feign stupidity on demand.

Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.

I always knew that I wanted to work on my own material - something that would be more long-lasting than short-lived electronic transmissions.

If poisons were ponies, I'd put my money on cyanide.

The spectrum on the list is very broad. It includes leftists who think that whiny liberals should be stuffed in a sack and drowned.

As I stood outside in Cow Lane, it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No ... eight days a week.

Compared with my life Cinderella was a spoiled brat.

Chicken fizz! O Lord, protect all of us who toil in the vineyards of experimental chemistry!

Whenever I'm out-of-doors and find myself wanting to have a first-rate think, I fling myself down on my back, throw my arms and legs out so that I look like an asterisk, and gaze at the sky.

I'm at that age where I watch such things with two minds, one that cackles at these capers and another that never gets much beyond a rather jaded and self-conscious smile, like the Mona Lisa.

Although it is pleasant to think about poison at any season, there is something special about Christmas, and I found myself grinning.

The very best people are like that. They don't entangle you like flypaper.

Liberals have always been the most fervent Imperialists.

During a long career in TV broadcasting, I spent a lot of time contributing to other people's creations.

I was learning that among friends, a smile can be better than a belly laugh.

To be most effective, flattery is always best applied with a trowel.

Whenever I'm with other people, part of me shrinks a little. Only when I am alone can I fully enjoy my own company.

Not very good with death? Father was a military man, and military men lived with death; lived for death; lived on death. To a professional soldier, oddly enough, death was life.

Give Nature a vacuum and she will try to fill it. Give her localized pressure and she will try to disperse it. She is forever seeking a balance she can never achieve, never happy with what she's got.

True charity, I had had discovered, consists of swallowing an invisible flaming sword.

...I found my eyes repelled by hers as if they were the like poles of a pair of magnets.

I could tell he was becoming sulky, as boys and men do when they're caught bluffing. And I ignored him, as girls and women do when they catch them out.

A dead body is much more fascinating than a live one, and I have learned that most corpses tell better stories.

Love is love, wherever you may find it—even when it's covered in feathers.

Growing up is like that, I suppose. The strings fall away and you're left standing on your own.

Books are like oxygen to a deep-sea diver, " she had once said. "Take them away and you might as well begin counting the bubbles.

Books make the soul float.

Dreamless nights, I knew, can be the most troubling, since you come back not knowing where you've been or what you've done.

Cheese!" I exclaimed. It was a secret prayer, whose meaning was known only to God and to me.

I remembered that Beethoven's symphonies had sometimes been given names... they should have call [the Fifth] the Vampire, because it simply refused to lie down and die.

Mother Goose!I have never much cared for flippant remarks, especially when others make them, and in particular, I don't give a frog's fundament for them when they come from an adult.

I do not encourage early morning chirpiness, even in those whom I know and love. It is generally a sign of a sloppy mind, and is not to be encouraged.

You can learn from a glance at anyone's library, not what they are, but what they wish to be.

The soul, Daffy says, is not necessarily where the heart is.

While you've been gadding about the countryside, we've held a meeting, and we've all of us decided that you must go.'In short, we've voted you out of the family, ' Daffy said. 'It was unanimous.

How very kind of her, ' I said. 'I must remember to send her a card.'I'd send her a card alright. It would be the Ace of Spades, and I'd mail it anonymously from somewhere other than Bishop's Lacey.

As anybody with two older sisters can tell you, a closed door is like a red rag to a bull. It cannot go unchallenged.

One of the things I dread about becoming an adult is that sooner or later you begin letting sentimentality get in the way of simple logic.

Magic doesn’t work when you’re sad.

I did not elaborate, nor did I need to. The human imagination is capable of anything when left on its own to fill in the blanks.

There's a lot to be said for being alone. But you and I know, don't we, Flavia, that being alone and being lonely are not at all the same thing?

As Daffy once said, the best place to hide a glum countenance is onstage at the opera.

It's amazing what the discovery of a corpse can do for one's spirits.

...silence is sometimes the most costly of commodities.

…because I was only eleven years old, I was wrapped in the best cloak of invisibility in the world.

The press was ruthless, but then so was the church.Flavia de Luce