307 Quotes by Alan Bradley

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.

There is always something vaguely unsettling about being alone in an empty building that is not your own. It is as if, whenever present inhabitants are away, the phantoms of former owners come shimmering out of the woodwork to protect their territory. Although you cannot see these ghosts, you can certainly feel their unwelcoming presence, and sometimes even smell them: a sort of shivering in the air that tells you that you’re not alone and not wanted.

How can I help?” I asked, as Anglicans have been taught to do – and in spite of the fact that our family have been Roman Catholics since St. Peter was a sailor.

In the December rain, the vicarage was especially damp and soggy, with an aura of boiled eggs and old books – a perfect setting for our encounter: dark, brooding, and simply reeking of secrets and tales told in an earlier time.

I dwelt there by choice in privacy and peace.

I firmly believe it is by sharing such stupid moments as these that we grow into someone other than who we used to be, and I was already feeling an inch taller.

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...

O, how I wish I could have conducted a chemical analysis on the look Inspector Hewitt gave me! It was composed of equal parts skepticism, outrage, acceptance, gratitude, relief, and surrender. I had never seen anything quite like it.

Girl be blowed!” I snapped. “I’m here as a brain, not as a female.