Alan Bradley
Alan Bradley
politics fervent
Liberals have always been the most fervent Imperialists.
thinking long-ago oatmeal
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 instance or oatmeal. Then when the fugitive word was least expecting it I would suddenly turn the full blaze of my attention back onto it catching the culprit in the beam of my mental torch before it could sneak off again into the darkness.
book eight heaven
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.
daughter father long-ago
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.
interesting enemy brain
I am often thought of as being remarkably bright, and yet my brains, more often than not, are busily devising new and interesting ways of bringing my enemies to sudden, gagging, writhing, agonizing death.
thinking sky doors
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.
flattery
To be most effective, flattery is always best applied with a trowel.
spoiled spoiled-brat brat
Compared with my life Cinderella was a spoiled brat.
real knowing together
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.
laughing belly belly-laughs
I was learning that among friends, a smile can be better than a belly laugh.
cyanide poison ponies
If poisons were ponies, I'd put my money on cyanide.
vineyards toil chemistry
Chicken fizz! O Lord, protect all of us who toil in the vineyards of experimental chemistry!
father military men
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.
people
The very best people are like that. They don't entangle you like flypaper.