Alan Bradley
Alan Bradley
children father book
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, delighted in putting her favorite volumes into her grandchildren's hands.
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.
husband grandmother air
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.
inspiration self volcanoes
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.
stupidity mind demand
One of the marks of a truly great mind, I had discovered, is the ability to feign stupidity on demand.
holiday thinking special
Although it is pleasant to think about poison at any season, there is something special about Christmas, and I found myself grinning.
thinking politics lists
The spectrum on the list is very broad. It includes leftists who think that whiny liberals should be stuffed in a sack and drowned.
book grandmother great-love
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.
careers long people
During a long career in TV broadcasting, I spent a lot of time contributing to other people's creations.
long would-be lasting
I always knew that I wanted to work on my own material - something that would be more long-lasting than short-lived electronic transmissions.
children writing ideas
Except I'm aware that as a writer you can't get away with as much writing for children as you can with adults. Children have much more finely tuned senses of justice, morals, and ethics. They are much more Platonic: children are symmetrical, before we begin to fragment them with our own nonsensical ideas and squelch their natural joy in knowledge.
growing-up tired talking
Growing up in a Canadian household that was more British than Big Ben, I dreamed of flying to England myself and visiting the places my family never tired of talking about. I always woke up before the plane landed.
fun book character
I had thought for years, probably 30 or 40 years, that it would be a lot of fun to try my hand at a classic English mystery novel... I love that form very much because the reader is so familiar with all of the types of characters that are in there that they already identify with the book.
teaching thinking together
TV and film taught me to think cinematically. Teaching others to edit, for example, provides a great deal of insight into the millions of ways in which given elements can be put together to tell a story.