Quote

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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Alan Bradley
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: October 10
Novelist
Writer
City of Toronto
Life
England
Ride
Aerial
Air
Grandmother
Balloon
Soon
Beloved
Balloons
Husband
Canada
Basket
View
Hot
Victorian
Views
London
Baskets
Wicker
Lasts
Sky
Skies
Emigrate
Last
Meant
Flew
Ascended

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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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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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The spectrum on the list is very broad. It includes leftists who think that whiny liberals should be stuffed in a sack and drowned.
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Liberals have always been the most fervent Imperialists.
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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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To be most effective, flattery is always best applied with a trowel.
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Chicken fizz! O Lord, protect all of us who toil in the vineyards of experimental chemistry!
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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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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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Compared with my life Cinderella was a spoiled brat.
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Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.
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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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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 was learning that among friends, a smile can be better than a belly laugh.
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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.
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