Diane Setterfield Quote
I have closed my study door on the world and shut myself away with people of my imagination. For nearly sixty years I have eavesdropped with impunity on the lives of people who do not exist. I have peeped shamelessly into hearts and bathroom closets. I have leaned over shoulders to follow the movements of quills as they write love letters, wills and confessions. I have watched as lovers love, murderers murder and childern play their make-believe. Prisons and brothels have opened their doors to me; galleons and camel trains have transported me across sea and sand; centuries and continents have fallen away at my bidding. I have spied upon the misdeeds of the mighty and witnessed the nobility of the meek. I have bent so low over sleepers in their beds that they might have felt my breath on their faces. I have seen their dreams.
I have closed my study door on the world and shut myself away with people of my imagination. For nearly sixty years I have eavesdropped with impunity on the lives of people who do not exist. I have peeped shamelessly into hearts and bathroom closets. I have leaned over shoulders to follow the movements of quills as they write love letters, wills and confessions. I have watched as lovers love, murderers murder and childern play their make-believe. Prisons and brothels have opened their doors to me; galleons and camel trains have transported me across sea and sand; centuries and continents have fallen away at my bidding. I have spied upon the misdeeds of the mighty and witnessed the nobility of the meek. I have bent so low over sleepers in their beds that they might have felt my breath on their faces. I have seen their dreams.
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About Diane Setterfield
The rights were acquired by David Heyman at Heyday Films and the novel was adapted for television by Christopher Hampton. Starring Vanessa Redgrave, Olivia Colman, and Sophie Turner, The Thirteenth Tale was televised on BBC Two in December 2013.
Diane Setterfield's second novel, Bellman & Black, was published in 2013 by Emily Bestler Books/Atria in the United States and by Orion in the UK. Her third novel, Once Upon a River, was published in 2018.
Before writing, Setterfield studied French literature at the University of Bristol, earning a bachelor of arts in 1986 and a PhD in 1993. Setterfield's PhD is on "autobiographical structures in André Gide's early fiction." Setterfield taught at schools as well as privately before leaving teaching in the late 1990s.
Setterfield grew up in Theale, Berkshire. She lives in Oxford, England.