Susanna Clarke Quotes

It seemed off that anyone could live behind such a high hedge of thorns, and he began to think it would be no great surprize to discover that Mr. Wyvern had been asleep for a hundred years or so. 'Wel...

Mr. Norrell did not know a great deal about war, but he suspected that soldiers are not generally your great respecters of books. They might put their dirty fingers on them. They might tear them! They...

Mr. Norrell gazed at Strange with an odd expression upon his face as though he would have been glad of a little conversation with him, but had not the least idea how to begin.

My father believed that, in understanding and in knowledge of right and wrong and in many other things, women are men’s equals and I am entirely of his opinion.

She spoke Basque, which is a language which rarely makes any impression upon the brains of any other race, so that a man may hear it as often and as long as he likes, but never afterwards be able to r...

She spoke the language of the Scottish Highlands (which is like singing).

The King’s Ministers had long treasured a plan to send the enemies of Britain bad dreams. The Foreign Secretary had first proposed it in January 1808 and for over a year Mr Norrell had industriously s...

There was very little about her face and figure that was in any wayremarkable, but it was the sort of face which, when animated byconversation or laughter, is completely transformed. She had a lovelyd...

They had no relish for gossiping about their acquaintance and even politics seemed a little dull. In short they felt that they should like to have the pleasure of looking at Lady Pole again, and so th...

But he had the natural distrust that a young, rich, self-indulgent man feels for members of the clergy. Who could say what notions of extraordinary virtue and unnecessary self-sacrifice they might be...

… bleak, wind-swept fens and moors; empty fields with broken walls and gates hanging off their hinges; a black, ruined church; an open grave; a suicide buried at a lonely crossroads; a fire of bones b...

Hatching his poems..

And being a man – and a clever one – and forty-two years old, he naturally had a great deal of information and a great many opinions upon almost every subject you care to mention, which he was eager t...

And now, Your Majesty, said Strange, I think it is time we returned to the Castle. You and I, Your Majesty, are a British King and a British magician. Though Great Britain may desert us, we have no ri...

And such a pinched-looking ruin of a thing now! I shall advice all the good-looking woman of my acquaintance not to die.

But these people were judged very stupid by their friends. Was not Jonathan Strange known to be precisely the sort of whimsical, contradictory person who would publish against himself?

But though he had no striking vices, his virtues were perhaps almost as hard to define.

But when the fairy sang the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. He understood for the first time...

Drawing teaches habits of close observation that will always be useful.

Fairies do not make a strong distinction between the animate and the inanimate. They believe that stones, doors, trees, fire, clouds and so forth all have souls and desires, and are either masculine o...