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

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

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

- Alan Bradley

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

- Alan Bradley

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

- Alan Bradley

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

- 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

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 bas…

- Alan Bradley