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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

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Alan Bradley
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: October 10
Novelist
Writer
City of Toronto
Like
Rather
Minds
Another
Conscious
Two
Watches
Self
Watch
Capers
Much
Laughing
Mona
Mind
Gets
Lisa
Things
Beyond
Jaded
Never
Age
Smile

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I always knew that I wanted to work on my own material - something that would be more long-lasting than short-lived electronic transmissions.
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To be most effective, flattery is always best applied with a trowel.
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The very best people are like that. They don't entangle you like flypaper.
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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.
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Except I'm aware that as a writer you can't get away with as much writing for children as you can with adults. Children have much more finely tuned senses of justice, morals, and ethics. They are much more Platonic: children are symmetrical, before we begin to fragment them with our own nonsensical ideas and squelch their natural joy in knowledge.
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Although it is pleasant to think about poison at any season, there is something special about Christmas, and I found myself grinning.
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I grew up in a very British family who had been transplanted to Canada, and my grandmother's house was filled with English books. I was a very early reader, so I was really brought up being surrounded with piles of British books and British newspapers, British magazines. I developed a really great love of England.
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Whenever I'm with other people, part of me shrinks a little. Only when I am alone can I fully enjoy my own company.
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If poisons were ponies, I'd put my money on cyanide.
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Compared with my life Cinderella was a spoiled brat.
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TV and film taught me to think cinematically. Teaching others to edit, for example, provides a great deal of insight into the millions of ways in which given elements can be put together to tell a story.
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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.
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Liberals have always been the most fervent Imperialists.
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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.
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I was an early reader, and my grandmother, who as a child had been forbidden to read by a father who believed books to be frivolous time-wasters, delighted in putting her favorite volumes into her grandchildren's hands.
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I was learning that among friends, a smile can be better than a belly laugh.
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Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.
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My grandmother flew only once in her life, and that was the day she and her new husband ascended into the skies of Victorian London in the wicker basket of a hot-air balloon. They were soon to emigrate to Canada, and the aerial ride was meant to be a last view of their beloved England.
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One of the marks of a truly great mind, I had discovered, is the ability to feign stupidity on demand.
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Chicken fizz! O Lord, protect all of us who toil in the vineyards of experimental chemistry!
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