"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. "
— Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie)

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

"Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend."
— Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie)

"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. "
— Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie)

"'I found a dead body in the cucumber patch,' I told them.

'How very like you,' Ophelia said, and went on preening her eyebrows."
— Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie)

"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.'"
— Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie)

"I brought to mind the image of the stranger lying there in the first light of dawn: the slight growth of whiskers on his chin, strands of his red hair shifting gently on the faint stirrings of the morning breeze, the pallor, the extended legs, the quivering fingers, that last, sucking breath. And that word, blown into my face ... "Vale."

The thrill of it all!

"Yes," I said, "it was devastating.""
— Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie)

". . .it occured 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."
— Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie)

"I hoisted the lid off the Spode vegetable dish and, from the depths of its hand-painted butterflies and raspberries, spooned out a generous helping of peas. Using my knife as a ruler and my fork as a prod, I marshaled the peas so that they formed meticulous rows and columns across my plate: rank upon rank of little green spheres, spaced with a precision that would have delighted the heart of the most exacting Swiss watchmaker. Then, beginning at the bottom left, I speared the first pea with my fork and ate it."
— Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie)

"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."
— Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie)

"My particular passion was poison."
— Alan Bradley

"You never know what you're getting into when you stick your nose in other people's rubbish."
— Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie)

"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.""
— Alan Bradley