Bradley Quotes

Remain true to yourself, child. If you know your own heart, you will always have one friend who does not lie.

The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.

I know all about endings. It is beginnings that elude me.

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.

Choices may be unbelievably hard but they're never impossible. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that's not how a person with integrity acts.

There is no such thing as a true tale. Truth has many faces and the truth is like to the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will, and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you.

Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.

Whenever I'm with other people, part of me shrinks a little. Only when I am alone can I fully enjoy my own company.

The Savage interrupted him. "But isn't it natural to feel there's a God?" "You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trousers with zippers," said the Controller sarcastically. "You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons–that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to.

All gods are one god.

Books are like oxygen to a deep-sea diver," she had once said. "Take them away and you might as well begin counting the bubbles.

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.

Love is the only prayer I know.

You know what we’ve succeeded in doing with this game?” “What’s that?” “Increasing the anticipation.” He laughed. “I know, right? Can I just be fill-in Bradley forever?

I gave her a partial smile and kept the rest of it for myself...

You are unreliable, Flavia,' he said. 'Utterly unreliable.' Of course I was! It was one of the things I loved most about myself.

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.

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.

I never left you; I never will leave you. While life lasts, and beyond, I am here.

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.

I have called on the Goddess and found her within myself

There's a lot to be said for being alone. But you and I know, don't we, Flavia, that being alone and being lonely are not at all the same thing?

... all the tears women shed, they leave no mark on the world ...

To know you are ignorant is the beginning of wisdom.

Tell them we may not be praying with them," Father told the Vicar, "but we are at least not actively praying against them.

I found a dead body in the cucumber patch,' I told them. 'How very like you,' Ophelia said, and went on preening her eyebrows.

By what men think, we create the world around us, daily new.

The older I grow the more I become certain that it makes no difference what words we use to tell the same truths.

There is no sorrow like the memory of love and the knowledge that it is gone forever

And I must believe that man has the power to know the right, to choose between good and evil and know that his choice has made a difference...

...silence is sometimes the most costly of commodities.

If there is a thing I truly despise, it is being addressed as "dearie." When I write my magnum opus, A Treatise Upon All Poison, and come to "Cyanide," I am going to put under "Uses" the phrase "Particularly efficacious in the cure of those who call one 'Dearie.

And so, perhaps, the truth winds somewhere between the road to Glastonbury, Isle of the Priests, and the road to Avalon, lost forever in the mists of the Summer Sea.

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.

Unless some sweetness at the bottom lie, Who cares for all the crinkling of the pie?

Never name the well from which you will not drink.

It had been awful, but I hadn't quit. I had persisted. In battle I had won.

I don't forgive people.Just ask Shauna Bradley. We were best friends in kindergarten until I discovered she was the one stealing the fruit snacks from my desk. She lost my trust that day, and even now when I see her, I have to refrain myself from shouting, "Why? Why did you do it?!

She consumed books like a whale eats krill.

What wise God would consign a man to Hell for ignorance, instead of teaching him better in the afterlife?

One of the marks of a truly great mind, I had discovered, is the ability to feign stupidity on demand.

I remembered a piece of sisterly advice, which Feely once gave Daffy and me: "If ever you're accosted by a man," she'd said, "kick him in the Casanovas and run like blue blazes!" Although it had sounded at the time like a useful bit of intelligence, the only problem was that I didn't know where the Casanovas were located. I'd have to think of something else.

You can learn from a glance at anyone's library, not what they are, but what they wish to be.

Simple pleasures are best.

I was me, I was Flavia. And I loved myself, even if no one else did.

They (penguins) then fall madly in love and live happily ever after. - And so you ask yourself: "If a penguin can have a worthwhile, stimulating relationship, why the hell can't I?" - Or maybe you ask yourself: "Would I be happier if I started dating a penguin

To be most effective, flattery is always best applied with a trowel.

Of all things we mortals are called upon to do, the most difficult is forgiveness; in order to truly do it, you will probably have to behave as if you already have forgiven for quite a while before you have actually done so.

There are ignorant priests and ignorant people, who are all too ready to cry sorcery if a woman is only a little wiser than they are!

Experience has taught me that an expected answer is often better than the truth.

If poisons were ponies, I'd put my money on cyanide.

Compared with my life Cinderella was a spoiled brat.

Dependability, integrity, the characteristic of never knowingly doing anything wrong, that you would never cheat anyone, that you would give everybody a fair deal. Character is a sort of an all-inclusive thing. If a man has character, everyone has confidence in him.

If you’re insinuating that my personal hygiene is not up to the same high standard as yours you can go suck my galoshes.

Still, one of my Rules of Life is this: When you want something, bite your tongue.

I felt a pang -- a strange and inexplicable pang that I had never felt before. It was homesickness. Now, even more than I had earlier when I'd first glimpsed it, I longed to be transported into that quiet little landscape, to walk up the path, to take a key from my pocket and open the cottage door, to sit down by the fireplace, to wrap my arms around myself, and to stay there forever and ever.

My love for you is a prayer, she thought. Love is the only prayer I know.

To know you are ignorant is the beginning of wisdom,

I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life

No man or woman can live another's fate

Although it is pleasant to think about poison at any season, there is something special about Christmas, and I found myself grinning.

Beware what you speak,' said the Merlin very softly, 'for indeed the words we speak make shadows of what is to come, and by speaking them we bring them to pass, my king.

If you own a machine, you are in turn owned by it, and spend your time serving it...

Magic is a matter of focusing the disciplined will. But sometimes the will must be abandoned. The secret lies in knowing when to exercise control, and when to let go.

I don't know what to say," she said, after a pause. "I don't want to tell you a lie, and I don't know the truth." It was maybe the most honest thing anyone had ever said to me.

But this is my truth; I who am Morgaine tell you these things, Morgaine who was in later days called Morgan le Fay.

Chicken fizz! O Lord, protect all of us who toil in the vineyards of experimental chemistry!

I have to admit, though, that Cynthia was a great organizer, but then, so were the men with whips who got the pyramids built.

Then I remembered that silence can sometimes do more damage than words.

Sanctified cyanide Super-quick arsenic Higgledy-piggledy Into the Soup. Put out the mourning lamps Call for coffin clamps Teach them to trifle with Flavia de Luce!

Set your course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.

I like big books and I cannot lie. You other readers can’t deny That when a kid walks in with The Name of the Wind Like a hardbound brick of win. Story bling. Wanna swipe that thing Cause you see that boy is speeding Right through the book he’s reading. I’m hooked and I can’t stop pleading. Wanna curl up with that for ages, All thousand pages. Reviewers tried to warn me. But with that plot you hooked Me like Bradley. Ooh, crack that fat spine. You know I wanna make you mine. This book is stella ’cause it ain’t some quick novella.

The Goddess does not shower her gifts on those who reject them.

The more I dealt with adults, the less I wanted to be one.

A peculiar feeling passed over me--or, rather, through me, as if I were an umbrella remembering what it felt like to pop open in the rain.

…because I was only eleven years old, I was wrapped in the best cloak of invisibility in the world.

I wanted to say a lot of things, but, as usual, I didn't have the words for the thoughts inside my head.

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.

Hello, Bradley,' said Mom. She'd regained her composure after my outburst, and now raised her camera. 'Stand close.' 'No, Mom,' I said. 'No pictures.' 'But you're friend's here now,' she said, waving us together. 'Smile!' 'I don't need a picture with-' the flash snapped '-another guy. That's great, Mom, thank you. Send that one to Dad and tell him we're going steady.

Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.

I reached out and touched his hands and they stilled at once. I had observed—although I did not often make use of the fact—that there were times when a touch could say things that words could not.

Seed biscuits and milk! I hated Mrs. Mullet's seed biscuits the way Saint Paul hated sin. Perhaps even more so. I wanted to clamber up onto the table, and with a sausage on the end of a fork as my scepter, shout in my best Laurence Olivier voice, 'Will no one rid us of this turbulent pastry cook?

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.

This is what I believe to be true. You have to do everything you can. You have to work your hardest. And if you do, if you stay positive, then you have a shot at a silver lining.

No point in wasting time with false vanity when you possess the real thing.

We need to have an escape plan."" "I'll shoot him," Bradley offered helpfully. "He has your gun,"Mary replied. "Oh, then that won't work." Mary sighed. Somehow she didn't think that Bradley's warrior-police guy was coming back anytime soon. "So, how do your legs feel?" she asked. She felt a large hand squeeze her thigh. "Bradley, that was my leg." "Oh, sorry, but what a relief, I thought I had lost feeling in my legs.

Horehound sticks are meant to be shared with friends, don't you think?' She was dead wrong about that: Horehound sticks were meant to be gobbled down in solitary gluttony, and preferably in a locked room, but I didn't dare say so.

I wanted to cry. I also wanted to go to my laboratory and prepare an enormous batch of nitrogen triiodide with which to blow up, in a spectacular mushroom cloud of purple vapor, the world and everyone in it.

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...

The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.

I wanted to write “stay” on your sides, surround your bed with oceans of salt. I hope he folds you into a fox, loves you like a splintered arrow, brandishes the kill of your lips. May the bouquet of your hips wither. May the wolves forget your name.

Mediocrity, I discovered, was the great camouflage; the great protective coloring. Those boys who did not fail, yet did not excel, were left alone, free of the demands of the master who might wish to groom them for glory and of the school bully who might make them his scapegoat. That simple fact was the first great discovery of my life.

What are we going to do, Dogger?' It seemed a reasonable question. After all he had been through, surely Dogger knew something of hopeless situations. 'We shall wait upon tomorrow,' he said. 'But--what if tomorrow is worse than today?' 'Then we shall wait upon the day after tomorrow.' 'And so forth?' I asked. 'And so forth,' Dogger said.

I think too many people presume to read the divine Scriptures and fall into such terrors as this,' said Patricius sternly. 'Those who presume on their learning will learn, I trust, to listen to their priests for the true interpretations.' The Merlin smiled gently. 'I cannot join you in that wish, brother. I am dedicated to the belief that it is God's will that all men should strive for wisdom in themselves, not look to it from some other. Babes, perhaps, must have their food chewed for them by a nurse, but men may drink and eat of wisdom for themselves.

Seen from the air, the male mind must look rather like the canals of Europe, with ideas being towed along well-worn towpaths by heavy-footed dray horses. There is never any doubt that they will, despite wind and weather, reach their destinations by following a simple series of connected lines. But the female mind, even in my limited experience, seems more of a vast and teeming swamp, but a swamp that knows in an instant whenever a stranger--even miles away--has so much as dipped a single toe into her waters. People who talk about this phenomenon, most of whom know nothing whatsoever about it, call it "woman's intuition.

Lancelot: Morgaine, Morgaine - kinswoman, I have never seen you weep. Morgaine: Are you like so many men, afraid of a woman's tears? (...) Lancelot: No (...) it makes them seem so much more real, so much more vulnerable - women who never weep frighten me, because I know they are stronger than I, and I am always a little afraid of what they will do.

They have not forgotten the Mysteries,' she said, ‘they have found them too difficult. They want a God who will care for them, who will not demand that they struggle for enlightenment, but who will accept them just as they are, with all their sins, and take away their sins with repentance. It is not so, it will never be so, but perhaps it is the only way the unenlightened can bear to think of their Gods.' Lancelot smiled bitterly. ‘Perhaps a religion which demands that every man must work though lifetime after lifetime for his own salvation is too much for mankind. They want not to wait for God's justice but to see it now. And that is the lure which this new breed of priests has promised them.' Morgaine knew that he spoke truth, and bowed her head in anguish. ‘And since their view of a God is what shapes their reality, so it shall be–the Goddess was real while mankind still paid homage to her, and created her form for themselves. Now they will make for themselves the kind of God they think they want–the kind of God they deserve, perhaps.' Well, so it must be, for as man saw reality, so it became.

The woman was putting her purse in the drawer and settling down behind the desk, and I realized I had never seen her before in my life. Her face was as wrinkled as one of those forgotten apples you sometimes find in the pocket of last year's winter jacket. Yes?" she said, peering over her spectacles. They teach them to do that at the Royal Academy of Library Science.

Sorry, old girl," I said to [my bicycle] Gladys in the gray dishwater light of early morning, "but I have to leave you at home." I could see that she was disappointed, even though she managed to put on a brave face. "I need you to stay here as a decoy," I whispered. "When they see you leaning against the greenhouse, they'll think I'm still in bed." Gladys brightened considerably at the thought of a conspiracy. [...] At the corner of the garden, I turned, and mouthed the words, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do," and Gladys signaled that she wouldn't. I was off like a shot.

For this is the thing the priests do not know, with their One God and One Truth; that there is no such thing as a true tale. Truth has many faces and the truth is like the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will, and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you, and whether, at the end, you arrive at the Holy Isle of Eternity or among the priests with their bells and their death and their Satan and hell and damnation...but perhaps I am unjust even to them. Even the Lady of the Lake, who hated a priest's robe as she would have hated a poisonous viper, and with good cause too, chid me once for speaking evil of the God. 'For all the Gods are one god,' she said to me then, as she had said many times before, and as I have said to my own novices many times, and as every priestess who comes after me will say again, 'and all the Goddesses are one Goddess, and their is only one Initiator. And to every man his own truth, and the God within.' And so, perhaps, the truth winds somewhere between the road to Glastonbury, Isle of the Priests, and the road to Avalon, lost forever in the mists of the Summer Sea. But this is my truth, I who am Morgaine tell you these things, Morgaine who was in later days called Morgan le Fay.