Susanna Clarke Quotes

She feared he would never profit by it for it was not the fashion to be modest and quiet and kind-hearted.

The more apparatus a magician carries about with him — coloured powders, stuffed cats, magical hats and so forth — the greater the fraud you will eventually discover him to be!

The silence of half a hundred cats is a peculiar thing, like fifty individual silences all piled one on top of another.

And her looks? Is she pretty? asked Strange. The question seemed to embarrass Henry. Miss Watkins is not generally considered one of the first in beauty, no. But then upon further acquaintance, you kn...

Books and papers are the basis of good scholarship and sound knowledge, declared Mr Norrell primly. Magic is to be put on the same footing as the other disciplines.

For a moment or two before the spell took effect, he was aware of all the sounds around him: rain splashing on metal and leather, and running down canvas; horses shuffling and snorting; Englishmen sin...

For this is England where a man's neighbours will never suffer him to live entirely bereft of society, let him be as dry and sour-faced as he may.

Ha!' said the tall man drily. 'He was in high luck. Rich old uncles who die are in shockingly short supply.

He thought he stood upon an English hillside. Rain was falling; it twisted in the air like grey ghosts. Rain fell upon him and he grew thin as rain. Rain washed away thought, washed away memory, all t...

I do not intend to go, in the space of one hour, from the helplessness of enchantment to another sort of helplessness!

I mean that two of any thing is a most uncomfortable number. One may do as he pleases. Six may get along well enough. But two must always struggle for mastery. Two must always watch each other. The ey...

In general, London found him disappointing. He did no magic, cursed no one, foretold nothing. Once at Mrs Godesdone’s house he was heard to remark that he thought it might rain, but this, if a prophec...

In short they felt that they should like to have the pleasure of looking at Lady Pole again, and so they told Sir Walter - rather than asked him - that he missed his wife. He replied that he did not....

Let us see, said Saint Oswald. A man in black clothes, with powerful magic and ravens at his command, and the hunting rights of a king. This suggests nothing to you? No apparently it does not. Well, i...

Like the hero of a fairy-tale Mr Norrell had discovered that the power to do what he wished had been his own all along.

Magic (in the practical sense) was much fallen off. It had low connexions.

Mr. Honeyfoot's post-chaise travelled through a world that seemed to contain a much higher proportion of chill grey sky and a much smaller one of solid comfortable earth than was usually the case.

Oh! it is an excellent thing, enthused a lady. See how the darkness of the mirror behind the figures sets off Mr Strange’s head. People always imagine that magicians and mirrors go together, complaine...

She preferred those occupations that require no companion. She walked alone, rad alone, sat alone in the sittingroom or in the ray of faint sunshine which sometimes penetrated the little courtyard ab...

Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians.