Susanna Clarke quotes

And how shall I think of you?' He considered a moment and then laughed. 'Think of me with my nose in a book! (Susanna Clarke)
The governess was not much liked in the village. She was too tall, too fond of books, too grave, and, a curious thing, never smiled unless there was something to smile at.
Susanna Clarke
It is these black clothes," said Strange. "I am like a leftover piece of funeral, condemned to walk about the Town, frightening people into thinking of their own mortality.
Susanna Clarke
It is curious and we magicians collect curiosities, you know.
Susanna Clarke
I know magicians and I know magic and I say this: all magicians lie and this one more than most.
Susanna Clarke
She even learnt the language of a strange country which Senior Cosetti had been told some people believed still existed, although no-one in the world could say where it was. The name of this country was Wales.
Susanna Clarke
Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. "I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, "but a gentleman never could.
Susanna Clarke
Time and I have quarrelled. All hours are midnight now. I had a clock and a watch, but I destroyed them both. I could not bear the way they mocked me.
Susanna Clarke
She wore a gown the color of storms, shadows, and rain and a necklace of broken promises and regrets.
Susanna Clarke
There is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure - it is, after all, what everybody does all the time.
Susanna Clarke
To be more precise it was the color of heartache. (Susanna Clarke)
He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands.
Susanna Clarke
.. The argument he was conducting with his neighbor as to whether the English magician had gone mad because he was a magician, or because he was English.
Susanna Clarke
Oh! And they read English novels! David! Did you ever look into an English novel? Well, do not trouble yourself. It is nothing but a lot of nonsense about girls with fanciful names getting married.
Susanna Clarke
Mr. Robinson was a polished sort of person. He was so clean and healthy and pleased about everything that he positively shone - which is only to be expected in a fairy or an angel, but is somewhat disconcerting in an attorney.
Susanna Clarke
For, though the room was silent, the silence of half a hundred cats is a peculiar thing, like fifty individual silences all piled one on top of another.
Susanna Clarke
A piece of writing is like a piece of magic. You create something out of nothing.
Susanna Clarke
Magic, madam, is like wine and, if you are not used to it, it will make you drunk.
Susanna Clarke
It [Ashfair House] was an old fashioned house-the sort of house in fact, as Strange expressed it, which a lady in a novel might like to be persecuted in.
Susanna Clarke
Well, I suppose one ought not to employ a magician and then complain that he does not behave like other people.
Susanna Clarke
He gave her his heart. She took it and placed it quietly in the pocket of her gown. No one observed what she did. (Susanna Clarke)
What nobility of feeling! To sacrifice your own pleasure to preserve the comfort of others! It is a thing, I confess, that would never occur to me.
Susanna Clarke
It is also true that his hair had a reddish tinge and, as everybody knows, no one with red hair can ever truly be said to be handsome.
Susanna Clarke
You mean to say he became mad deliberately?' ... Nothing is more likely,' said the duke.
Susanna Clarke
Ha!' said the tall man drily. 'He was in high luck. Rich old uncles who die are in shockingly short supply.
Susanna Clarke