Susanna Clarke Quotes

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairy’s song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself.

Perhaps I am too tame, too domestic a magician. But how does one work up a little madness? I meet with mad people every day in the street, but I never thought before to wonder how they got mad. Perhaps I should go wandering on lonely moors and barren shores. That is always a popular place for lunatics - in novels and plays at any rate. Perhaps wild England will make me mad.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

..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.

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

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.

There is nothing else in magic but the wild thought of the bird as it casts itself into the void. There is no creature upon the earth with such potential for magic. Even the least of them may fly straight out of this world and come by chance to the Other Lands. Where does the wind come from that blows upon your face, that fans the pages of your book? Where the harum-scarum magic of small wild creatures meets the magic of Man, where the language of the wind and the rain and the trees can be understood, there we will find the Raven King.

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.

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).

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.

Lovers are rarely the most rational beings in creation.

There was very little about her face and figure that was in any way remarkable, but it was the sort of face which, when animated by conversation or laughter, is completely transformed. She had a lovely disposition, a quick mind and a fondness for the comical. She was always very ready to smile and, since a smile is the most becoming ornament that any lady can wear, she had been known upon occasion to outshine women who were acknowledged beauties in three countries.

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

To be more precise it was the color of heartache.

I am, as far as I can tell, about a month behind Lord Byron. In every town we stop at we discover innkeepers, postillions, officials, burghers, potboys, and all kinds and sorts of ladies whose brains still seem somewhat deranged from their brief exposure to his lordship. And though my companions are careful to tell people that I am that dreadful being, an English magician, I am clearly nothing in comparison to an English poet and everywhere I go I enjoy the reputation- quite new to me, I assure you- of the quiet, good Englishman, who makes no noise and is no trouble to any one.

He screamed. Mmm?' inquired the gentleman. I...I would never presume to interrupt you, sir. But the ground appears to be swallowing me up.' It is a bog,' said the gentleman, helpfully. It is certainly a most terrifying substance.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

But, though French, she was also very brave.

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

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

There must come a time when the bullets will run out

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.

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.

Yet it is true—skin can mean a great deal. Mine means that any man may strike me in a public place and never fear the consequences. It means that my friends do not always like to be seen with me in the street. It means that no matter how many books I read, or languages I master, I will never be anything but a curiosity—like a talking pig or a mathematical horse.

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.

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

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

Houses, like people, are apt to become rather eccentric if left too much on their own; this house was the architectural equivalent of an old gentleman in a worn dressing-gown and torn slippers, who got up and went to bed at odd times of day, and who kept up a continual conversation with friends no one else could see.

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