Quotes from Diane Setterfield

I read old novels. The reason is simple: I prefer proper endings. Marriages and deaths, noble sacrifices and miraculous restorations, tragic separations and unhoped-for reunions, great falls and dreams fulfilled; these, in my view, constitute an ending worth the wait. They should come after adventures, perils, dangers and dilemmas, and wind everything up nice and neatly. Endings like this are to be found more commonly in old novels than new ones, so I read old novels.

opening the book, i inhaled. the smell of old books, so sharp, so dry you can taste it.

In this cruel world kindness should always be repaid.

I am human. Like all humans, I do not remember my birth. By the time we wake up to ourselves, we are little children, and our advent is something that happened an eternity ago, at the beginning of time. We live like latecomers to the theater; we must catch up as best we can, divining the begging from the shape of later events. - Vida Winter

He didn't know of course. Not really. And yet that was what he said, and I was soothed to hear it. For I knew what he meant. We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delineaments, weight, and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all. I know, he said, because he was human, and therefore, in a way, he did.

And now, dear reader, the story is over. It is time for you to cross the bridge once more and return to the world you came from. This river, which is and is not the Thames, must continue flowing without you. You have haunted here long enough, and besides, you surely have rivers of your own to attend to?

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner.

There are stories that may be told aloud, and stories that must be told in whispers, and there are stories that are never told at all.

A story so cherished it has to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.

It was better to tell such stories close to the river than in a drawing room. Words accumulate indoors, trapped by walls and ceilings. The weight of what has been said can lie heavily on what might yet be said and suffocate it. By the river the air carries the story on a journey: one sentence drifts away and makes way for the next.

What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney?

Emmeline didn't call me anything. She didn't need, for I was always there. You only need names for the absent.

There are times when the human face and body can express the yearning of the heart so accurately that you can, as they say, read them like a book. Do not abandon me.

For it must be very lonely being dead.

Sometimes you can know things. Things about yourself. Things from before you can remember.

People with ambition don't give a damn what other people think of them.

But there can be no secrets in a house where there are children.

We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delinaments, weight and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all. I know, he said, because he was human, and therefore, in a way, he did.

Without the past to cast its long shadow, might you see the future more clearly?

Fate, at first so amenable, so reasonable, so open to negotiation, ends up by exacting a cruel revenge for happiness.

Of course I loved books more than people. Of course I valued Jane Eyre over the anonymous stranger...Of course all of Shakespeare was worth more than a human life.

No one can hold you to a decision made in the middle of the night.

But she had that laugh, and the sound of it was so beautiful that when you heard it, it was as if your eyes saw her through your ears and she was transformed.

What better place to kill time than a library? And for me, what better way to get to know someone than through her choice and treatment of books?