307 Quotes by Alan Bradley

Duty is the best and wisest of all teachers.

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.

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.

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

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

Was he being what Daffy called “ironical”? She had once told me that the word meant the use of veiled sarcasm: the dagger under the silk. “The smiler with the knife!” she had hissed in a horrible voice.

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

There was no way out; not, at least, in this direction. I was like a hamster that had climbed to the top of the ladder in its cage and found there was nowhere to go but down. But surely hamsters knew in their hamster hearts that escape was futile; it was only we humans who were incapable of accepting our own helplessness.

You can pray in the churchyard,” the sergeant said. “The Lord has large ears.