Top 100 Susanna Clarke Quotes
#1. In his madness and his blindness he was Lear and Gloucester combined.
Susanna Clarke
#2. Bright yellow leaves flowed swiftly upon the dark, almost-black water, making patterns as they went. To Mr. Segundus the patterns looked a little like magical writing. 'But then,' he thought, 'So many things do.
Susanna Clarke
#3. With characteristic exuberance Tom named this curiously constructed
house Castel des Tours saunz Nowmbre, which means the Castle of
Innumerable Towers. David Montefiore had counted the innumerable
towers in 1764. There were fourteen of them.
Susanna Clarke
#4. Drawing teaches habits of close observation that will always be useful.
Susanna Clarke
#5. And all the nursemaids and kitchen maids I ever knew when I was a child, always had a aunt, who knew a woman, whose first cousin's boy had been put into just such a box, and had never been seen again.
Susanna Clarke
#6. I always really liked magicians. I'm not even sure why - except that they know things other people don't, and they live in untidy rooms full of strange objects.
Susanna Clarke
#7. I have a scholar's love of silence and solitude. To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment.
Susanna Clarke
#8. It is curious and we magicians collect curiosities, you know.
Susanna Clarke
#9. Lord Byron ! Of course!" cried Dr Greysteel. "I forgot all about him! I must go and warn him to be discreet." "I think it's a little late for that, sir," said Frank.
Susanna Clarke
#10. I have been quite put out of temper this morning and someone ought to die for it.
Susanna Clarke
#11. A Nottinghamshire man called Tubbs wished very much to see a fairy and, from thinking of fairies day and night, and from reading all sorts of odd books about them, he took it into his head that his coachman was a fairy.
Susanna Clarke
#12. A tragi-comedy, telling of an impoverished minister's desperate attempts to gain money by any means, beginning with a mercenary marriage and ending with sorcery. I should think it might be received very well. I believe I shall call it, ' Tis Pity She's a Corpse.
Susanna Clarke
#13. 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
#14. A patrol had been sent out to look at the road between two towns, but some Portuguese had come along and told the patrol that this was one of the English magician's roads and was certain to disappear in an hour or two taking everyone upon it to Hell - or possibly England.
Susanna Clarke
#15. Arabella, like a sweet, compliant woman and good wife, put all thoughts of her new curtains aside for the moment and assured both gentlemen that in such a cause it was no trouble to her to wait.
Susanna Clarke
#16. In familiar surroundings our manners are cheerful and easy, but only transport us to places where we know no one and no one knows us, and Lord! how uncomfortable we become!
Susanna Clarke
#17. 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
#18. There is a book waiting for him upon the library table; his eyes fancy they still follow its lines of type, his head still runs upon its argument, his fingers itch to take it up again.
Susanna Clarke
#19. 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?
Susanna Clarke
#20. In some ways, 'Mansfield Park' is 'Pride and Prejudice' turned inside out.
Susanna Clarke
#21. Nothing, I find, has prepared me for the sight of my own characters walking about. A playwright or screenwriter must expect it; a novelist doesn't and naturally concludes that she has gone mad.
Susanna Clarke
#22. Several people seized Strange bodily. One man started shaking him vigorously, as though he thought that he might in this way dispel any magic before it took effect.
Susanna Clarke
#23. After all," he thought, "what can a magician do against a lead ball? Between the pistol firing and his heart exploding, there is no time for magic.
Susanna Clarke
#24. Many people nowadays have surnames that reveal their ancestors' fairy origins. Otherlander and Fairchild are two.
Susanna Clarke
#25. She wore a gown the color of storms, shadows, and rain and a necklace of broken promises and regrets.
Susanna Clarke
#28. I had to restrain myself from buying a book on 19th-century fruit knives.
Susanna Clarke
#29. Yet within Mr Norrell's dry little heart there was as lively an ambition to bring back magic to England as would satisfied even Mr Honeyfoot, and it was with the intention of bring that ambition to a long-postponed fulfilment that Mr Norrell now proposed to go to London.
Susanna Clarke
#30. I have no cause to love Mr. Norrell- far from it. But I know this about him: he is a magician first and everything else second- and Jonathan is the same. Books and magic are all either of them really care about.
Susanna Clarke
#31. Of all the tiresome situations in the world, thought the Prince Regent, the most tiresome was to rise from one's bed in a state of uncertainty as to whether or not one was the ruler of Great Britain.
Susanna Clarke
#32. A piece of writing is like a piece of magic. You create something out of nothing.
Susanna Clarke
#33. 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 recall a single syllable of it.
Susanna Clarke
#34. This is the genius of my enemy! Lock a door against him and all that happens is that he learns first how to pick a lock and second how to build a better one against you!
Susanna Clarke
#35. Mr. Honeyfoot did not propose going quite so far
indeed he did not wish to go far at all because it was winter and the roads where very shocking.
Susanna Clarke
#36. Poor gentleman," said Mr Segundus. "Perhaps it is the age. It is not an age for magic or scholarship, is it sir? Tradesmen prosper, sailors, politicians, but not magicians. Our time is past.
Susanna Clarke
#37. Sometimes you my graciously permit all the most beautiful ladies in the land to wait in line to kiss your hands and fall in love with you.
Susanna Clarke
#38. 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.
Susanna Clarke
#39. The old King is dead. The new King approaches! And at his approach the world sheds its sorrow. The sings of the old King dissolve like morning mist! The world assumes the character of the new. His virtues fill up the wood and world!
Susanna Clarke
#40. Every man and woman present thought how the neatly drawn lines and words upon the maps were in truth ice-covered pools and rivers, silent woods, frozen ditches and high, bare hills and every one of them thought how many sheep and cattle and wild creatures died in this season.
Susanna Clarke
#41. 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
#42. Byron!" exclaimed the little man. "Really? Dear me! Mad, and a friend of Lord Byron!" He sounded as if he did not know which was worse.
Susanna Clarke
#43. Like many spells with unusual names, the Unrobed Ladies was a great deal less exciting than it sounded.
Susanna Clarke
#44. O, wherever men of my sort used to go, long ago. Wandering on paths that other men have not seen. Behind the sky. On the other side of the rain.
Susanna Clarke
#45. An explorer cannot stay at home reading maps other men have made.
Susanna Clarke
#46. Both had indulged in, if not Black Magic, then certainly magic of a darker hue than seemed desirable or legitimate.
Susanna Clarke
#47. I hope there may be bogs and that John McKenzie may drown in them.
Susanna Clarke
#48. All books are doors; and some of them are wardrobes.
Susanna Clarke
#49. He hardly ever spoke of magic, and when he did it was like a history lesson and no one could bear to listen to him.
Susanna Clarke
#50. And what do you keep in such a pretty little box, sir? Snuff?'
Oh, no! It is a great treasure of mine that I wish Lady Pole to wear tonight!' He opened the box and showed Stephen a small, white finger.
Susanna Clarke
#51. Ha!" he thought. "That will teach me to meddle with magic meant for kings! Norrell is right. Some magic is not meant for ordinary magicians. Presumably John Uskglass knew what to do with this horrible knowledge. I do not. Should I tell someone? The Duke? He will not thank me for it.
Susanna Clarke
#52. 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
#53. Like Mrs Pleasance I always fancy that misers are old. I cannot tell why this should be since I am sure that there are as many young misers as old. As to whether or not Mr Norrell was in fact old, he was the sort of man who had been old at seventeen.
Susanna Clarke
#54. I must confess that in my teens and twenties, I loved 'Mansfield Park' rather in spite of Fanny than because of her. Like Fanny's rich, sophisticated cousins, I didn't really get her.
Susanna Clarke
#55. Magic (in the practical sense) was much fallen off. It had low connexions.
Susanna Clarke
#56. Well, Henry, you can cease frowning at me. If I am a magician, I am a very indifferent one. Other adepts summon up fairy-spirits and long-dead kings. I appear to have conjured the spirit of a banker.
Susanna Clarke
#57. Still the strange ships glittered and shone, and this led to some discussion as to what they might be made of. The Admiral thought perhaps iron or steel. (Metal ships indeed! The French are, as I have often supposed, a very whimsical nation.)
Susanna Clarke
#58. She doesn't do the things heroines are supposed to. Which is rather Jane Austen's point - Fanny is her subversive heroine. She is gentle and self-doubting and utterly feminine; and given the right circumstances, she would defy an army.
Susanna Clarke
#59. It seemed that it was not only live magicians which Mr. Norrell despised. He had taken the measure of all the dead ones too and found them wanting.
Susanna Clarke
#60. For there was nothing in his eyes but the black night and the cold stars.
Susanna Clarke
#61. All these details took but a moment to apprehend yet the impression made upon Mr. Segundus by the two ladies was unusually vivid --almost supernaturally so-- like images in a delirium. A queer shock thrilled through his whole being his senses were overwhelmed and he fainted away.
Susanna Clarke
#62. 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 eyes of all the world will be on two, uncertain which of them to follow.
Susanna Clarke
#63. She so cheerfully resigned to his neglecting her that he could not help opening his mouth to protest
Susanna Clarke
#64. Above all remember this: that magic belongs as much to the heart as to the head and everything which is done, should be done from love or joy or righteous anger (from Ladies of Grace Adieu).
Susanna Clarke
#65. Other countries have stories of kings who will return at times of great
need. Only in England is it part of the constitution.
Susanna Clarke
#66. Such nonsense!" declared Dr Greysteel. "Whoever heard of cats doing anything useful!"
"Except for staring at one in a supercilious manner," said Strange. "That has a sort of moral usefulness, I suppose, in making one feel uncomfortable and encouraging sober reflection upon one's imperfections.
Susanna Clarke
#67. This is a very grave matter, punishable by ... well, I do not exactly know what, but something rather severe, I should imagine.
Susanna Clarke
#68. The pools had been written onto the fields by the rain. The pools were a magic worked by the rain, just as the tumbling of the black birds against the grey was a spell that the sky was working and the motion of grey-brown grasses was a spell that the wind made. Everything had meaning.
Susanna Clarke
#69. Who was it that said a magician needs the subtlety of a Jesuit, the daring of a soldier and the wits of a thief? I believe it was meant for a insult, but it has some truth in it.
Susanna Clarke
#70. She had been a comet; and her blazing descent through dark skies had been plain for all to see.
Susanna Clarke
#71. Suddenly it seemed that all that had been learnt in every English childhood of the wildness of English magic might still be true, and even now on some long-forgotten paths, behind the sky, on the other side of the rain, John Uskglass might be riding still, with his company of men and fairies. Most
Susanna Clarke
#72. I feel very much at home in the early nineteenth century and am not inclined to leave it.
Susanna Clarke
#73. Alexander of Whitby taught that the universe is like a tapestry only parts of which are visible to us at a time. After we are dead, we will see the whole and then it will be clear to us how the different parts relate to each other.
Susanna Clarke
#74. 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!
Susanna Clarke
#75. 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. 'Well, I shall not mind that so much,' he thought, 'so long as I am not expected to kiss him.
Susanna Clarke
#76. Of course, as a model for my magician Strange is far from perfect
he lacks the true heroic nature; for that I shall be obliged to put in something of myself.
Susanna Clarke
#77. Mr Norrell was delighted. He did not believe that anyone had ever proposed such a piece of magic before and begged Sir Walter to convey his compliments to Lord Castlereagh as the possessor of a most original brain.
Susanna Clarke
#78. He hoped his enemies all had reason to fear him and his friends reason to love him ...
Susanna Clarke
#79. 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 might- horror of horrors!- read them and try the spells!
Susanna Clarke
#81. Oh," said the Duke of Wellington, not much interested, "they are still complaining about that, are they?
Susanna Clarke
#82. And the name of the one shall be Fearfulness. And the name of the other shall be Arrogance ... Well, clearly you are not Fearfulness, so I suppose you must be Arrogance.' This was not very polite.
Susanna Clarke
#83. She spoke the language of the Scottish Highlands (which is like singing).
Susanna Clarke
#84. 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
#85. Saints, such as me, ought always to listen attentively to the prayers of poor, dirty, ragged men, such as you. No matter how offensively those prayers are phased.
Susanna Clarke
#86. He smiles but rarely and watches other men to see when they laugh and then does the same.
Susanna Clarke
#87. Woods were ringed with a colour so soft, so subtle that it could scarcely be said to be a colour at all. It was more the idea of a colour - as if the trees were dreaming green dreams or thinking green thoughts.
Susanna Clarke
#88. Bryon tilted his head to a very odd angle, half-closed his eyes and composed his features to suggest that he was about to expire from chronic indigestion.
Susanna Clarke
#89. After two hours it stopped raining and in the same moment the spell broke, which Peroquet and the Admiral and Captain Jumeau knew by a curious twist of their senses, as if they had tasted a string quartet, or been, for a moment, deafened by the sight of colour blue.
Susanna Clarke
#90. I could always imagine more interesting places to be than where I was. And more interesting people than me being there. Eventually, this led to making up stories and writing things down.
Susanna Clarke
#92. 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
#93. You were always cheerful - tho' often left to your own devices. You were hardly ever out of temper - tho' often severely provoked. Your every speech was remarkable for its wit and genius - tho' you got no credit for it and almost always received a flat contradiction.
Susanna Clarke
#94. I shall advise all the good-looking women of my acquaintance not to die
Susanna Clarke
#95. In a war one is either living like a prince or a vagabond. I
Susanna Clarke
#96. 'Pride and Prejudice' is often compared to 'Cinderella,' but Jane Austen's real 'Cinderella' tale is 'Mansfield Park.'
Susanna Clarke
#97. Thaumatomane: a person possessed of a passion for magic and wonders, Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson.
Susanna Clarke
#98. That will teach me to meddle with magic meant for kings! Norrell is right. Some magic is not meant for ordinary magicians. Presumably John Uskglass knew what to do with this horrible knowledge. I do not.
Susanna Clarke
#99. When you're writing, you're creating something out of nothing ... A successful piece of writing is like doing a successful piece of magic.
[As quoted on WritersServices, 6 March 2012]
Susanna Clarke
#100. The man under the hedge, sir. He is a magician. Did you never hear that if you wake a magician before his time, you risk bringing his dreams out of his head into the world?
Susanna Clarke
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
