Susanna Clarke quotes

Susanna Clarke is an English author best known for her acclaimed fantasy novel "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell." Her works blend historical fiction with magical realism, enchanting readers with intricate storytelling and vivid characters. She has received significant literary awards and recognition for her contributions to modern fantasy literature. Here are 29 of her quotes:

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

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

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