Alan Bradley

“Growing up is like that, I suppose. The strings fall away and you're left standing on your own.”

“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.”

“The soul, Daffy says, is not necessarily where the heart is.”

“I remembered that Beethoven's symphonies had sometimes been given names... they should have call [the Fifth] the Vampire, because it simply refused to lie down and die.”

“Cheese!" I exclaimed. It was a secret prayer, whose meaning was known only to God and to me.”

“How could I tell Clarence that finding another dead body was anything but dreadful? On the contrary: it was thrilling; it was exciting; it was exhilarating, it was invigorating; to say nothing of electrifying and above all, satisfying.How could I tell the dear man that murder made me feel so gloriously alive?”

“It's amazing what the discovery of a corpse can do for one's spirits.”

“As Daffy once said, the best place to hide a glum countenance is onstage at the opera.”

“During a long career in TV broadcasting, I spent a lot of time contributing to other people's creations.”

“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.”

“When you're that age, you sometimes have a great enthusiasm that is very deep and very narrow, and that is something that has always intrigued me-- that world of the eleven-year-old that is so quickly lost.”

“There are choices in life which you are aware, even as you make them, cannot be undone; choices after which, once made, things will never be the same.There is that moment when you can still walk away, but if you do, you will never know what might have been.”

“I always knew that I wanted to work on my own material - something that would be more long-lasting than short-lived electronic transmissions.”

“As anybody with two older sisters can tell you, a closed door is like a red rag to a bull. It cannot go unchallenged.”

“I have no fear of the dead. Indeed in my own limited experience I have found them to produce in me a feeling that is quite the opposite of fear. A dead body is much more fascinating than a live one and I have learned that most corpses tell better stories. I’d had the good fortune of seeing several of them in my time.”

“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.”

“I dreamt of turrets and craggy ledges where the windswept rain blew in from the ocean with the odor of violets. A pale woman in Elizabethan dress stood beside my bed and whispered in my ear that the bells would ring. An old salt in an oilcloth jacket sat atop a piling, mending nets with an awl, while far out at sea a tiny aeroplane winged its way towards the setting sun.”

“But when oxidation nibbles more slowly - more delicately, like a tortoise - at the world around us, without a flame, we call it rust and we sometimes scarcely notice as it goes about its business consuming everything from hairpins to whole civilizations.”

“You can learn from a glance at anyone's library, not what they are, but what they wish to be.”

“Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.”