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

- Alan Bradley

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 bec…

- Alan Bradley

One of the marks of a truly great mind, I had discovered, is the ability to feign stupidity on demand.

- Alan Bradley

If poisons were ponies, I'd put my money on cyanide.

- Alan Bradley

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 …

- Alan Bradley

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

- Alan Bradley

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, del…

- Alan Bradley

I had long ago discovered that when a word or formula refused to come to mind the best thing for it was to think of something else: tigers for instan…

- Alan Bradley

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, o…

- Alan Bradley