Susanna Clarke Quotes

Sing like no one is listening. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watching, and live like it’s heaven on earth.

She wore a gown the color of storms, shadows, and rain and a necklace of broken promises and regrets.

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 would.

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.

There must come a time when the bullets will run out

I know magicians and I know magic and I say this: all magicians lie and this one more than most.

I was told once by some country people that a magician should never tell his dreams because the telling will make them come true. But I say that is great nonsense.

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.

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.

All books are doors; and some of them are wardrobes.

How quickly was every bad thing discovered to be the fault of the previous administration (an evil set of men who wedded general stupidity to wickedness of purpose).

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.

Well, I suppose one ought not to employ a magician and then complain that he does not behave like other people.

Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic.

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.

you must learn to live as I do - in the face of constant criticism, opposition and censure. That, sir, is the English way.

Magic, madam, is like wine and, if you are not used to it, it will make you drunk.

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.

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.

The land is all too shallow It is painted on the sky And trembles like the wind-shook rain When the Raven King passed by

It would need someone very remarkable to recover your name, Stephen, someone of rare perspicacity, with extraordinary talents and incomparable nobility of character. Me, in fact.

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.

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.

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.

He smiles but rarely and watches other men to see when they laugh and then does the same.

But, though French, she was also very brave.

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

There is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure - it is, after all, what everybody does all the time.

To be more precise it was the color of heartache.

It 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.

This is a very grave matter, punishable by...well, I do not exactly know what, but something rather severe, I should imagine.

You mean to say he became mad deliberately?' ...Nothing is more likely,' said the duke.

Lovers are rarely the most rational beings in creation.

It has been remarked (by a lady infinitely cleverer than the present author) how kindly disposed the world in general feels to young people who either die or marry.

He gave her his heart. She took it and placed it quietly in the pocket of her gown. No one observed what she did.

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.

..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.

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.

A piece of writing is like a piece of magic. You create something out of nothing.

How is a magician to exist without books? Let someone explain that to me. It is like asking a politician to achieve high office without the benefit of bribes or patronage.

An explorer cannot stay at home reading maps other men have made.

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.

It is curious and we magicians collect curiosities, you know.

And how shall I think of you?' He considered a moment and then laughed. 'Think of me with my nose in a book!

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

Unfortunately, Childermass's French was so strongly accented by his native Yorkshire that Minervois did not understand and asked Strange if Childermass was Dutch.

When you're writing, you're creating something out of nothing ... A successful piece of writing is like doing a successful piece of magic.", 6 March 2012]

Where have they gone?" "Wherever magicians used to go. Behind the sky. On the other side of the rain.

It might well appear to Sir Walter that there had been no quarrel. It was often the case that gentlemen did not observe the signs.

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.