Alan Bradley

“Sometimes I hated myself but not for long.”

— Alan Bradley

“Nobody ever simply dies.”

— Alan Bradley

“Simple pleasures are best.”

— Alan Bradley

“Books make the soul float.”

— Alan Bradley

“And it was signed simply “George.”

— Alan Bradley

“She consumed books like a whale eats krill.”

— Alan Bradley

“Oh, there you are, you odious little prawn...”

— Alan Bradley

“I was the eighth dwarf. Sneaky.”

— Alan Bradley

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

— Alan Bradley

“Everyone wanted to have a word, but nobody wanted to say anything that mattered.”

— Alan Bradley

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

— Alan Bradley

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

— Alan Bradley

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

— Alan Bradley

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

— Alan Bradley

“Then I remembered that silence can sometimes do more damage than words.”

— Alan Bradley

“Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, and anyone else I've managed to leave out–”

— Alan Bradley

“How I longed to tell her about Harriet--but somehow I could not. The grief in the room belonged to Porcelain and I…

— Alan Bradley

Not very good with death? Father was a military man, and military men lived with death; lived for death; lived on death.…

— Alan Bradley

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

— Alan Bradley

“Good morning, Flavia," she said at last, but her acknowledgment of my presence came too late for my liking.”

— Alan Bradley

“Ordinarily, anyone who made such a remark to my face would go to the top of my short list for strychnine.”

— Alan Bradley

“I had concocted the gunpowder myself from niter, sulfur, charcoal, and a happy heart. When working with explosives, I've found that attitude…

— Alan Bradley

“Seed biscuits and milk! I hated Mrs. Mullet's seed biscuits the way Saint Paul hated sin. Perhaps even more so.”

— Alan Bradley

“A peculiar feeling passed over me--or, rather, through me, as if I were an umbrella remembering what it felt like to pop…

— Alan Bradley

“How could I tell Clarence that finding another dead body was anything but dreadful? On the contrary: it was thrilling; it was…

— Alan Bradley

“I remembered that Johnson had declared portrait painting to be an improper employment for a woman. “Public practice of any art and…

— Alan Bradley

“I visualized myself pulling on my mental thinking cap, jamming it down around my ears as I had taught myself to do.…

— Alan Bradley

“Excuse me,' I said. 'I've just remembered something.' It was true. What I'd remembered was this: While I was not in the…

— Alan Bradley

“As he drank, I remembered that there's a reason we English are ruled more by tea than by Buckingham Palace or His…

— Alan Bradley

“It’s not polite to ask ” he said with a slight smile. “One must never ask a policeman his secrets.” “Why not…

— Alan Bradley

It is not unknown for fathers with a brace of daughters to reel off their names in order of birth when summoning…

— Alan Bradley

“I shot him a broad smile, a smile wide enough to present him with a good view of the wire braces that…

— Alan Bradley

“Seen from the air, the male mind must look rather like the canals of Europe, with ideas being towed along well-worn towpaths…

— Alan Bradley

“I hoisted the lid off the Spode vegetable dish and, from the depths of its hand-painted butterflies and raspberries, spooned out a…

— Alan Bradley

“You must have loved her awfully," I said, realizing even as I spoke that I made it sound as if Fenella were…

— Alan Bradley

“I detected instantly that she didn’t like me. It’s a fact of life that a girl can tell in a flash if…

— Alan Bradley

“Being alone,” I snapped, without meaning to be intentionally rude. I was simply being truthful. “Being alone,” she said, nodding. I could…

— Alan Bradley

“I had found by experience that putting things down on paper helped to clear the mind in precisely the same way, as…

— Alan Bradley

“To each of the mourners outside in the lane, I would be no more than a pale face glimpsed for a moment…

— Alan Bradley

“But getting back to my old friend water, the thing of it is this: No matter how hot or how cold, no…

— Alan Bradley