Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alan Bradley
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: October 10
Novelist
Writer
City of Toronto
Father
Believed
Hands
Favorite
Volumes
Putting
Frivolous
Book
Early
Delighted
Children
Reader
Forbidden
Time
Books
Grandchildren
Child
Volume
Read
Grandmother

More quotes by Alan Bradley

Image
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
Image
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
Image
During a long career in TV broadcasting, I spent a lot of time contributing to other people's creations.
Alan Bradley
Image
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
Image
Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.
Alan Bradley
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Compared with my life Cinderella was a spoiled brat.
Alan Bradley
Image
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
Image
One of the marks of a truly great mind, I had discovered, is the ability to feign stupidity on demand.
Alan Bradley
Image
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
Image
The very best people are like that. They don't entangle you like flypaper.
Alan Bradley
Image
To be most effective, flattery is always best applied with a trowel.
Alan Bradley
Image
If poisons were ponies, I'd put my money on cyanide.
Alan Bradley
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Although it is pleasant to think about poison at any season, there is something special about Christmas, and I found myself grinning.
Alan Bradley