Alan Bradley (writer) Quotes

16 Sourced Quotes

I am often thought of as being remarkably bright, and yet my brains, more often than not, are busily devising new and interesting ways of bringing my enemies to sudden, gagging, writhing, agonizing death.

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

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

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

Alan Bradley
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.

Alan Bradley
If you remember nothing else, remember this: Inspiration from outside one's self is like the heat in an oven. It makes passable Bath buns. But inspiration from within is like a volcano: It changes the face of the world.

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

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

Alan Bradley
It is not unknown for fathers with a brace of daughters to reel off their names in order of birth when summoning the youngest, and I had long ago become accustomed to being called 'Ophelia Daphne Flavia, damn it.

Alan Bradley
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.

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

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

Alan Bradley
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.

Alan Bradley
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.

Alan Bradley
I had long ago discovered that when a word or formula refused to come to mind the best thing for it was to think of something else: tigers for instance or oatmeal. Then when the fugitive word was least expecting it I would suddenly turn the full blaze of my attention back onto it catching the culprit in the beam of my mental torch before it could sneak off again into the darkness.

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

Alan Bradley