307 Quotes by Alan Bradley

Lobsters, snails, crabs, clams, squids, slugs, and members of the European royal families, by contrast, have blue blood, due to the fact that it’s based on copper rather than iron.

His was a kind of gentleness which, I think, cannot be learned and cannot be taught.

Motherhood could be a grim old business, I decided, and one that could never, really, be shared. In spite of her gentle exterior, there was a part of the Inspector’s wife that was forever beyond knowing. Perhaps it was like that with all mothers. I.

The very best people are like that. They don’t entangle you like flypaper.

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

Everything is always a muddle just before it settles in. Tell.

I’m at that age where I watch such things with two minds, one that cackles at these capers and another that never gets much beyond a rather jaded and self-conscious smile, like the Mona Lisa.

Tickling and learning were much the same thing. When you tickle yourself – ecstasy; but when anyone else tickles you – agony.

Theater, I suppose, is a form of mass mesmerism, and if that’s the case, Shakespeare, despite his chemical shortcomings, was surely one of the greatest hypnotists who ever lived.