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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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Alan Bradley
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: October 10
Novelist
Writer
City of Toronto
Long
Damn
Reel
Daughter
Summoning
Birth
Braces
Called
Youngest
Names
Daughters
Father
Accustomed
Daphne
Order
Fathers
Brace
Become
Unknown
Ophelia

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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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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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If poisons were ponies, I'd put my money on cyanide.
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The very best people are like that. They don't entangle you like flypaper.
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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.
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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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Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.
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I was learning that among friends, a smile can be better than a belly laugh.
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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.
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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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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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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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Liberals have always been the most fervent Imperialists.
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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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During a long career in TV broadcasting, I spent a lot of time contributing to other people's creations.
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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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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.
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Compared with my life Cinderella was a spoiled brat.
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