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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
Mind
Gets
Lisa
Things
Beyond
Jaded
Never
Age
Smile
Like
Rather
Minds
Another
Conscious
Two
Watches
Self
Watch
Capers
Much
Laughing
Mona

More quotes by Alan Bradley

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What intrigued me more than anything else was finding out the way in which everything, all of creation - all of it! - was held together by invisible chemical bonds, and I found a strange, inexplicable comfort in knowing that somewhere, even though we couldn't see it in our own world, there was a real stability.
Alan Bradley
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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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Compared with my life Cinderella was a spoiled brat.
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If poisons were ponies, I'd put my money on cyanide.
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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.
Alan Bradley
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One of the marks of a truly great mind, I had discovered, is the ability to feign stupidity on demand.
Alan Bradley
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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.
Alan Bradley
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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
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Chicken fizz! O Lord, protect all of us who toil in the vineyards of experimental chemistry!
Alan Bradley
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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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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.
Alan Bradley
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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.
Alan Bradley
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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.
Alan Bradley
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The very best people are like that. They don't entangle you like flypaper.
Alan Bradley
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Growing up in a Canadian household that was more British than Big Ben, I dreamed of flying to England myself and visiting the places my family never tired of talking about. I always woke up before the plane landed.
Alan Bradley
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During a long career in TV broadcasting, I spent a lot of time contributing to other people's creations.
Alan Bradley
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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.
Alan Bradley
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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
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Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.
Alan Bradley
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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.
Alan Bradley