Quotes from Diane Setterfield

They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.

This might seem excessive; ten years of marriage is usually enough to cure marital affection

just want to take some photographs. I don't think the weather is on my side, though." "You'll get to see it properly within the hour. This mist won't last long.

wall of yew twice

Time was of the essence. For at eight o'clock the world came to an end. It was reading time.

then into a space where there seemed to be nothing but mist. When we came to a wall of yew twice as high as Aurelius himself, we followed it. I noticed a sparkling in the grass and on the leaves: The sun had come out. The moisture in the air began to evaporate and the circle of visibility grew wider by the minute. Our wall of yew had led us full circle around an empty space; we had arrived back at the same walkway we had entered by.

The hours between eight in the evening and one or two in the morning have always been my magic hours.

Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you?

If you dazzle a man with green eyes, he will be so hypnotized that he won't notice there is someone inside the eyes spying on him.

When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled. And during this time, these days when I read all day and half the night, when I slept under a counterpane strewn with books, when my sleep was black and dreamless and passed in a flash and I woke to read again—the lost joys of reading returned to me.

A child is not an empty vessel, Fleet, to be formed in whatever way the parent thinks fit. They are born with their own hearts and they cannot be made otherwise, no matter what love a man lavishes on them.

Do you mean to tell me, Aurelius, that you are a foundling?" "Yes. That is the word for what I am. A foundling.

Cualquier institutriz, después de pasar unas pocas horas en esta casa, se habría hecho una idea clara y completa de la tarea a la que se enfrenta; pero el médico es un hombre, de modo que no puede percatarse de lo tedioso que a cualquiera le resulta que le expliquen detenidamente lo que ya ha entendido.

Once you said a thing, it could never be taken back and would be taken up and repeated and altered and told again, no matter how misshapen and out of true. Better to say nothing.

When there is no light to see by, any drunk can walk in a straight line!

half crazed with pain, astounded that the human body could feel so much and not die of it.

regretted that he had to comfort me for his own loss.

The mist was almost gone. The magical shapes of the topiary had lost their charm and looked like the unkempt bushes and hedges they were.

But you know it was here? In this house?" Aurelius shoved his hands into the depths of his pockets. His shoulders tightened. "I wouldn't expect other people to understand. I haven't got any proof. But I do know." He sent me a quick glance, and I encouraged him, with my eyes, to continue. "Sometimes you can know things. Things about yourself. Things from before you can remember. I can't explain it.

Una mente fatigada tiende a tomar derroteros infructuosos; no hay nada que una buena noche de sueño no pueda reparar.

The beginning, perhaps. The girl without the mother. But after that . . . I wish someone could tell me what it means. I wish there was someone who could just tell me the truth.

I believe you," I repeated, my tongue thick with all the waiting words. "I've had that feeling, too. Knowing things you can't know. From before you can remember." And there it was again! A sudden movement in the corner of my eye, there and gone in the same instant.

For it looked as if the walls were simply dissolving in the rain; those stones still standing, pale and insubstantial as rice paper, seemed ready to melt away under my very eyes if I just stood there long enough.

Cuando escribo, incluso ahora mientras estoy escribiendo esta frase, esta palabra, soy consciente de la presencia de un lector fantasma que se inclina sobre mi hombro y contempla mi pluma, que tergiversa mis palabras y distorsiona mi significado, haciéndome sentir incómoda incluso en la intimidad de mis propios pensamientos.