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

Alan Bradley

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Alan Bradley
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: October 10
Novelist
Writer
City of Toronto
Always
Flattery
Applied
Effective
Best

More quotes by Alan Bradley

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I had thought for years, probably 30 or 40 years, that it would be a lot of fun to try my hand at a classic English mystery novel... I love that form very much because the reader is so familiar with all of the types of characters that are in there that they already identify with the book.
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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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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The very best people are like that. They don't entangle you like flypaper.
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.
Alan Bradley
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The spectrum on the list is very broad. It includes leftists who think that whiny liberals should be stuffed in a sack and drowned.
Alan Bradley
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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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Liberals have always been the most fervent Imperialists.
Alan Bradley
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Whenever I'm out-of-doors and find myself wanting to have a first-rate think, I fling myself down on my back, throw my arms and legs out so that I look like an asterisk, and gaze at the sky.
Alan Bradley
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Compared with my life Cinderella was a spoiled brat.
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
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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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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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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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Whenever I'm with other people, part of me shrinks a little. Only when I am alone can I fully enjoy my own company.
Alan Bradley
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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.
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.
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'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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Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.
Alan Bradley