Alan Bradley Quotes

I want to know who I am before it is too late—before I am no longer the same person—before I become someone different. Although there are days when this seems a furious race against time, there are others when it seems to matter not a tinker's curse.
Alan Bradley
Do What?' 'Lie,' he said. 'Why do you fabricate these outlandish stories?''Well,' I wanted to say, 'there are those of us who create because all around us, things visible and invisible are crumbling. We are like the stonemasons of Babylon, forever working, as it says in Jeremiah, to shore up the city of walls.'I didn't say that, of course. What I did say was: 'I don't know.
Alan Bradley
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.
Alan Bradley
We always want to love the recipients of our charity," the doctor said, negotiating a sharp bend in the road with a surprising demonstration of steering skill, "but it is not necessary. Indeed, it is sometimes not possible.
Alan Bradley
Giving someone the benefit of the doubt is not so simple as it sounds. What it means, in fact, is being charitable--which, as the vicar is fond of pointing out, is the most difficult of the graces to master. Faith and hope are a piece of cake but charity is a Pandora's box: the monster in the cistern which, when the lid is opened, comes swarming out to seize you by the throat.
Alan Bradley
True charity, I had had discovered, consists of swallowing an invisible flaming sword.
Alan Bradley
...I found my eyes repelled by hers as if they were the like poles of a pair of magnets.
Alan Bradley
It was a lie and I detected it at once. As an accomplished fibber myself, I spotted the telltale signs of an untruth before they were halfway out of his mouth: the excessive detail, the offhand delivery, and the wrapping-up of it all in casual chitchat.
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 felt a pang -- a strange and inexplicable pang that I had never felt before. It was homesickness. Now, even more than I had earlier when I'd first glimpsed it, I longed to be transported into that quiet little landscape, to walk up the path, to take a key from my pocket and open the cottage door, to sit down by the fireplace, to wrap my arms around myself, and to stay there forever and ever.
Alan Bradley
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.
Alan Bradley
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. False feelings are allowed to clog the works like raw honey poured into the tiny wheels of a fine timepiece.
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
A dead body is much more fascinating than a live one, and I have learned that most corpses tell better stories.
Alan Bradley
The place smelled of commodes and playing cards, and before I was halfway to the end I had made a firm resolve never to begin to die. For me it would be all or nothing: no half measures, no lingering on the doorstep.
Alan Bradley
I had found by experience that putting things down on paper helped to clear the mind in precisely the same way, as Mrs. Mullet had taught me, that an eggshell clarifies the consommé or the coffee, which, of course, is a simple matter of chemistry. The albumin contained in the eggshell has the property of collecting and binding the rubbish that floats in the dark liquid, which can then be removed and discarded in a single reeking clot: a perfect description of the writing process.
Alan Bradley
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.
Alan Bradley
Love is love, wherever you may find it—even when it's covered in feathers.
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
I had once repeated the experiment to reassure myself that this was so, and it was. Ashes to ashes; starch to sugar. A little window into the Creation
Alan Bradley
The press was ruthless, but then so was the church.Flavia de Luce
Alan Bradley
When you're that age, you sometimes have a great enthusiasm that is very deep and very narrow, and that is something that has always intrigued me-- that world of the eleven-year-old that is so quickly lost.
Alan Bradley
…because I was only eleven years old, I was wrapped in the best cloak of invisibility in the world.
Alan Bradley
There are choices in life which you are aware, even as you make them, cannot be undone; choices after which, once made, things will never be the same.There is that moment when you can still walk away, but if you do, you will never know what might have been.
Alan Bradley
...silence is sometimes the most costly of commodities.
Alan Bradley
The first thing they would do would be to open my mouth and extract the soggy ball of my handkerchief, and as they spread it out flat on the table beside my white remains, an orange stamp—a stamp belonging to the King—would flutter to the floor: It was like something right out of Agatha Christie.
Alan Bradley
It's amazing what the discovery of a corpse can do for one's spirits.
Alan Bradley
How could I tell Clarence that finding another dead body was anything but dreadful? On the contrary: it was thrilling; it was exciting; it was exhilarating, it was invigorating; to say nothing of electrifying and above all, satisfying.How could I tell the dear man that murder made me feel so gloriously alive?
Alan Bradley
As Daffy once said, the best place to hide a glum countenance is onstage at the opera.
Alan Bradley
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?
Alan Bradley