Quotes from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“There is genuine joy in being alone in the dark inside your own head with no outside distractions, where you can scramble from ledge to rocky ledge, hallooing happily in a vast, echoing cave; climbing hand over hand from ledge to ledge of facts and memories, picking up old gems and new: examining, comparing, putting them down again and reaching for the next.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“The more I dealt with adults, the less I wanted to be one.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“Magic doesn’t work when you’re sad.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“One of the things I dread about becoming an adult is that sooner or later you begin letting sentimentality get in the way of simple logic. False feelings are allowed to clog the works like raw honey poured into the tiny wheels of a fine timepiece.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“Everyone else in the world is sorry. Dare to be something more than that.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“There are choices in life which you are aware, even as you make them, cannot be undone; choices after which, once made, things will never be the same.

There is that moment when you can still walk away, but if you do, you will never know what might have been.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“It is always better, and far more rewarding, I have observed, to have someone else feel sorry for you, than to do the job yourself.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“I must be honest about the fact that I'm made extremely uneasy by excessive noise, and that I do not care for shouted instructions. If I'd been meant to be a sheep, I reasoned, I'd have been born with wool instead of skin.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“Anne of Green Gables was cuddled up next to Huckleberry Finn; The Hunchback of Notre Dame was wedged tightly between Heidi and Little Women; and Nicholas Nickleby leaned in a familiar way against A Girl of the Limberlost. None of the books were in alphabetical order, which made it necessary to cock my head sideways to read each one of the spines. By the end of the third shelf I had begun to realize why librarians are sometimes able to achieve such pinnacles of crankiness: It’s because they’re in agony. If only publishers could be persuaded, I thought, to stamp all book titles horizontally instead of vertically, a great deal of unpleasantness could be avoided all round.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“I was proud of my strategy. It was one I had been saving for just such an occasion as this. Who can say no to a personal matter? Even God is curious about such things, which is why He listens to our prayers.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“A pillar of strength, Daffy had once remarked, was a nice way of saying someone was terminally bossy,”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“There’s something in human nature, I’m beginning to learn, that makes an adult, when speaking to a younger person, magnify the little things and shrink the big ones. It’s like looking—or talking—through a kind of word-telescope that, no matter which end they choose, distorts the truth. Your mistakes are always magnified and your victories shrunken.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“One of the things I dread about becoming an adult is that sooner or later you begin letting sentimentality get in the way of simple logic.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“Was it wrong to be so deceitful? Well, yes, it probably was. But if God hadn’t wanted me to be the way I am, He would have arranged to have me born a haddock instead of Flavia de Luce—wouldn’t He?”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“And this must be our little Flavia!'

On paper the man was already dead.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“Feigning stupidity was one of my specialties. If stupidity were theoretical physics, then I would be Albert Einstein.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“Tickling and learning were much the same thing. When you tickle yourself—ecstasy; but when anyone else tickles you—agony.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“Dogger had once warned me to be wary of any man who introduced himself as 'Mr.' It was an honorific, he said, a mark of respect to be bestowed by others, but never, ever, under any circumstances, upon oneself.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“I had suddenly become aware of my hands, which meant only one thing: It was time to say my farewells and make a graceful—or at least dignified—exit.

Dogger had once told me, 'Your hands know when it's time to go.'

And he had been right. The hands are the canaries in one's own personal coal mine: They need to be watched carefully and obeyed. A fidget demands attention, and a full-blown not-knowing-what-to-do-with-them means 'Vamoose!”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“The soul, Daffy says, is not necessarily where the heart is.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“No sooner was I safely among the gravestones than a great feeling of warmth and calm contentment came sweeping over me.

Life among the dead.

This was where I was meant to be!

What a revelation! And what a place to have it!

I could succeed at whatever I chose. I could, for instance, become an undertaker. Or a pathologist. A detective, a gravedigger, a tombstone maker, or even the world's greatest murderer.

Suddenly the world was my oyster—even if it was a dead one.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“Duty is the best and wisest of all teachers.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“There are choices in life which you are aware, even as you make them, cannot be undone; choices after which, once made, things will never be the same. There is that moment when you can still walk away, but if you do, you will never know what might have been. Saint Paul on the road to Damascus might have pleaded sunstroke, for example, and the world would have been a different place. Admiral Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar might have decided he was outnumbered and fled under full sail to fight another day. I thought for a few moments about these two instances, and then I knocked on Miss Fawlthorne’s door. The hollow sound of knuckles on wood echoed ominously from the”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“There are rare and precious moments, when one is a stranger in a room, that one can examine its inhabitants with little or no prejudice. Without knowing so much as their names, it is possible to form an assessment based purely upon observation and instinct.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“I knew that hunched shoulders, hanging hair, and eyes on the ground were fairly reliable signs of a girl dejected, a girl who needed to be approached and jollied into a nice talk or a nice cup of tea; whereas a back-flung head, with eyes closed and a secret smile on the upturned face, was the signal of someone who needed to be left alone with her thoughts.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“No sooner was I safely among the gravestones than a great feeling of warmth and calm contentment came sweeping over me. Life among the dead. This was where I was meant to be!”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“There's something in human nature, I'm beginning to learn, that makes an adult, when speaking to a younger person, magnify the little things and shrink the big ones. It's like looking--or talking--through a kind of word-telescope that, no matter which end they choose, distorts the truth. Your mistakes are always magnified and your victories shrunken.
[...]
Perhaps only J. M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, saw through dimly to the truth: that by the time we are old enough to protest such rotten injustice, we have already forgotten it.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“A conversation between a person of my age and one of hers is like a map of a maze: There are things that each of us knows, and that each of us knows the other knows, that can be talked about. But there are things that each of us knows that the other doesn't know we know, which must not be spoken of, no matter what. Because of our ages, and for reasons of decency, there are what Daffy would refer to as taboos: forbidden topics which we may stroll among like islands of horse dung in the road that, although perfectly evident to both of us, must not be mentioned or kicked at any cost.

It's a strange world when you come right down to it.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

“We were all of us like the proverbial ships that pass in the night, signaling only briefly to one another before sailing off over the horizon into our own patch of darkness.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

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“Let me list for you some of the many ways in which you might be afraid to live a more creative life: You’re afraid you have no talent. You’re afraid you’ll be rejected or criticized or ridiculed or misunderstood or—worst of all—ignored. You’re afraid there’s no market for your creativity, and therefore no point in pursuing it. You’re afraid somebody else already did it better. You’re afraid everybody else already did it better. You’re afraid somebody will steal your ideas, so it’s safer to keep them hidden forever in the dark. You’re afraid you won’t be taken seriously. You’re afraid your work isn’t politically, emotionally, or artistically important enough to change anyone’s life. You’re afraid your dreams are embarrassing. You’re afraid that someday you’ll look back on your creative endeavors as having been a giant waste of time, effort, and money. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of discipline. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of work space, or financial freedom, or empty hours in which to focus on invention or exploration. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of training or degree. You’re afraid you’re too fat. (I don’t know what this has to do with creativity, exactly, but experience has taught me that most of us are afraid we’re too fat, so let’s just put that on the anxiety list, for good measure.) You’re afraid of being exposed as a hack, or a fool, or a dilettante, or a narcissist. You’re afraid of upsetting your family with what you may reveal. You’re afraid of what your peers and coworkers will say if you express your personal truth aloud. You’re afraid of unleashing your innermost demons, and you really don’t want to encounter your innermost demons. You’re afraid your best work is behind you. You’re afraid you never had any best work to begin with. You’re afraid you neglected your creativity for so long that now you can never get it back. You’re afraid you’re too old to start. You’re afraid you’re too young to start. You’re afraid because something went well in your life once, so obviously nothing can ever go well again. You’re afraid because nothing has ever gone well in your life, so why bother trying? You’re afraid of being a one-hit wonder. You’re afraid of being a no-hit wonder”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, quote from Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“You might as well learn right now, you two, that the poorest guide you can have in life is what people will say.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, quote from Heaven to Betsy

“My thanks, Master.” He waved his hand. “It is what I do. If you wish to thank me, do a kindness for someone in need.”
― Jacqueline Carey, quote from Kushiel's Scion

“Aamah would sometimes remind them that the story of an old disputte should be retold only when no aftertaste of bitterness remains upon the tongue.”
― Catherine M. Wilson, quote from A Hero's Tale

“But while having some choice is generally good, it seems that having too many options tends to undermine our feelings of satisfaction, no matter which option we choose.”
― Sam Harris, quote from The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values

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