Top 200 Alan Bradley Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “As he drank, I remembered that there’s a reason we English are ruled more by tea than by Buckingham Palace or His Majesty’s Government: Apart from the soul, the brewing of tea is the only thing that sets us apart from the great apes – or so the Vicar had remarked to Father...”

— Alan Bradley

102. “O, how I wanted to hug him! O, how I wanted to pour our my affection! But there are times, I was learning, when one must not, on any account, give in to impulse. It was, I suppose, what they mean by the whole idea of “being British”: holding oneself in check for the greater good; substituting the encouraging word for the crushing embrace.”

— Alan Bradley

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

— Alan Bradley

104. “I have learned that under certain circumstances, a fib is not only permissible, but can even be an act of perfect grace.”

— Alan Bradley

105. “And in that instant I decided that I liked Mary, even if she didn’t like me. Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.”

— Alan Bradley

106. “You never know what you’re getting into when you stick your nose in other people’s rubbish.”

— Alan Bradley

107. “Horehound sticks are meant to be shared with friends, don’t you think?′ She was dead wrong about that: Horehound sticks were meant to be gobbled down in solitary gluttony, and preferably in a locked room, but I didn’t dare say so.”

— Alan Bradley

108. “Magic doesn’t work when you’re sad.”

— Alan Bradley

109. “Even after five hundred years?” “A seed is a remarkable vessel,” he told me. “Our one true time machine. Each of them is capable of bringing the past, alive, into the present. Think of that!”

— Alan Bradley

110. “Saving a life is not servile, no matter how it looks.”

— Alan Bradley

111. “I realized at once that a great actress can never be greater than when she’s starring in her own life.”

— Alan Bradley

112. “Dreamless nights, I knew, can be the most troubling, since you come back not knowing where you’ve been or what you’ve done.”

— Alan Bradley

113. “I had to suppress a smile. Sherlock Holmes once remarked of his brother, Mycroft, that you were as unlikely to find him outside of the Diogenes Club as you were to meet a tramcar coming down a country lane. Like Mycroft, Father had his rails, and he ran on them. Except for church and the occasional short-tempered dash to the train to attend a stamp show, Father seldom, if ever, stuck his nose out-of-doors.”

— Alan Bradley

114. “There are rare and precious moments, when one is a stranger in a room, that one can examine its inhabitants with little or no prejudice. Without knowing so much as their names, it is possible to form an assessment based purely upon observation and instinct.”

— Alan Bradley

115. “I sometimes suffer from an excess of zeal.”

— Alan Bradley

116. “I was proud of my strategy. It was one I had been saving for just such an occasion as this. Who can say no to a personal matter? Even God is curious about such things, which is why He listens to our prayers.”

— Alan Bradley

117. “Dieter, you’re a brick!” I shouted. I couldn’t help it. Dieter looked as pleased as punch. To him, being called a brick by an English native was probably more precious than a knighthood.”

— Alan Bradley

118. “But what he said was true enough: I had recently destroyed a perfectly good set of wire braces by straightening them to pick a lock. Father had grumbled, of course, but had made another appointment to have me netted and dragged back up to London, to that third-floor ironmonger’s shop in Farringdon Street, where I would be strapped to a board like Boris Karloff as various bits of ironmongery were shoved into my mouth, screwed in, and bolted to my gums.”

— Alan Bradley

119. “Translation: She was perishing with nosiness.”

— Alan Bradley

120. “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

121. “It is always better, and far more rewarding, I have observed, to have someone else feel sorry for you, than to do the job yourself.”

— Alan Bradley

122. “Give Nature a vacuum and she will try to fill it. Give her localized pressure and she will try to disperse it. She is forever seeking a balance she can never achieve, never happy with what she’s got.”

— Alan Bradley

123. “Because there was something in them that had the ring of truth, people always fell for fairytale excuses.”

— Alan Bradley

124. “Tolstoy had written something about happy families being all alike and unhappy ones each unhappy in its own way.”

— Alan Bradley

125. “Father looked puzzled. My witty repartee was completely lost on him.”

— Alan Bradley

126. “The spell fior finding books,′ she whispered, closing her eyes before pronouncing the incantation: ‘Abracadabra, Alakazam, Angela Thirkell, and Omar Kayyam.”

— Alan Bradley

127. “You’re in for it this time,′ she said. ‘Father’s been looking for you all afternoon, He’s just got off the telephone with Constable Linnet, in the village. I must say he seemed rather dissapointed to hear that they hadn’t fished your soggy little corpse out of the duck pond.”

— Alan Bradley

128. “I had learned that a lie wrapped in detail, like a horse pill in an apple, went down with greater ease.”

— Alan Bradley

129. “I almost clasped my hands together. This amazing man was so noble he might have been born in armor and on horseback, ready-equipped with shield and lance.”

— Alan Bradley

130. “To those of us who truly love one another, the occasional flaming fib serves only to strengthen the ties.”

— Alan Bradley

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

— Alan Bradley

132. “One of the things I dread about becoming an adult is that sooner or later you begin letting sentimentality get in the way of simple logic.”

— Alan Bradley

133. “I knew that hunched shoulders, hanging hair, and eyes on the ground were fairly reliable signs of a girl dejected, a girl who needed to be approached and jollied into a nice talk or a nice cup of tea; whereas a back-flung head, with eyes closed and a secret smile on the upturned face, was the signal of someone who needed to be left alone with her thoughts.”

— Alan Bradley

134. “I put a hand gently on her shoulder and held out my handkerchief. She looked at it skeptically. “It’s all right,” I said. “They’re only grass stains.”

— Alan Bradley

135. “Ned stuck out his calloused fingers and gave my hand a surprisingly gentle shake. It was like shaking hands with a pineapple.”

— Alan Bradley

136. “She consumed books like a whale eats krill.”

— Alan Bradley

137. “Authors are known to have fiendishly clever minds, and the authors of children’s books are more fiendishly clever than most.”

— Alan Bradley

138. “We who lose parents are one, I thought. We all of us are as brothers and sisters of a single blood.”

— Alan Bradley

139. “Here we were, Father and I, shut up in a plain little room, and for the first time in my life having something that might pass for a conversation. We were talking to one another almost like adults; almost like one human being to another; almost like father and daughter. And even though I couldn’t think of anything to say, I felt myself wanting it to go on and on until the last star blinked out.”

— Alan Bradley

140. “There are things that are worse than glass and crocodiles.”

— Alan Bradley

141. “He gave me the kind of skeptical look that I expect to get from Saint Peter on judgement day.”

— Alan Bradley

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

— Alan Bradley

143. “Everyone wanted to have a word, but nobody wanted to say anything that mattered.”

— Alan Bradley

144. “Older sisters are much alike the world over: half a cup of love and half one of contempt.”

— Alan Bradley

145. “Water!” Miss Moate called out loudly, clapping her hands, and we all turned our attention toward her. “Water is life. Remember that, girls, and remember it well. You can live without food and sunlight for a remarkably long while, but you cannot live without water. You must know at all times and in all places how to acquire water.”

— Alan Bradley

146. “Was it wrong to be so deceitful? Well, yes, it probably was. But if God hadn’t wanted me to be the way I am, He would have arranged to have me born a haddock instead of Flavia de Luce – wouldn’t He?”

— Alan Bradley

147. “Inspector Hewitt flicked on the defroster to evaporate the condensation our words were forming on the windscreen.”

— Alan Bradley

148. “I do not encourage early morning chirpiness, even in those whom I know and love. It is generally a sign of a sloppy mind, and is not to be encouraged.”

— Alan Bradley

149. “IT WAS ONE OF those glorious days in March when the air was so fresh that you worshipped every whiff of it; that each breath of the intoxicating stuff created such new universes in your lungs and brain you were certain you were about to explode with sheer joy; one of those blustery days of scudding clouds and piddling showers and gum boots and wind-blown brollies that made you know you were truly alive.”

— Alan Bradley

150. “Life’s like that, too,” Aunt Felicity continued. “Too much push, and bang through the bottom one goes. Still, if one doesn’t paddle, one doesn’t get anywhere.”

— Alan Bradley