Quotes from Diane Setterfield

Death might be a necessity in farming, but suffering? Never.

There's a great many things hard to fathom in darkness that set themselves straight in the light of day.

By the time the words from the bank reached her, the thick white river mist had rinsed the urgency out of them. The words drifted into her ear, washed out and waterlogged, and sounded scarcely louder than the thoughts in her own head.

Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so. For it must be very lonely being dead.

reality, the picnickers were sweltering beneath their clothes, the champagne was warm, and if anyone had thought to take their shoes off they would have had to walk through goose droppings. Still, they were willing to feign jollity, in the hope that their pretense would encourage the real thing.

The Thames that goes north, south, east, and west, to finally go east, that seeps to one side and the other as it moves forward, that goes slow as it goes fast, that evaporates into the sky whilst meandering to the sea, is more about motion than about beginnings. If it has a beginning, it is located in a dark inaccessible place. Better study where it goes than where it comes from.

I see," she said softly, nodding her head as though she really did. "Well, it's your business, of course." She turned her hand in her lap and stared into her damaged palm. "You are at liberty to say nothing, if that is what you want. But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grow pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you." Her eyes swiveled back to me. "Believe me, Margaret. I know.

Yesterday or the day before, while I had been going about my business, quietly and in private, some unknown person—some stranger—had gone to the trouble of marking my name onto this envelope. Who was it who had had his mind's eye on me while I hadn't suspected a thing?

Any governess, after the few hours I have had in this house, would have a full and clear picture of the task awaiting her, but he is a man, hence cannot see how tiresome it is to have explained at length what one has already fully understood.

In speech he stretched out his vowel sounds to give his mouth a rest before the next consonant.

What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney?

He would go to the bakery for a cake, and somewhere in the shop-I had never discovered where; it was one of the few secrets I had not fathomed-he kept a candle, which came out on this day every year, was lit, and which I blew out, with as good an impression of happiness as I could muster. Then we ate the cake, with tea, and settled down to quiet digestion and cataloging.

The rhythm of the train on the tracks suggested words to his overtired brain and he heard them as clearly as if an unseen person had pronounced them: Something is going to happen.

The end of my nine o'clocks was another anchor in time gone.

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

Cuando el miedo y el frío hacen de ti una estatua en tu propia cama, no ansíes que la Verdad pura y dura acuda en tu auxilio. Lo que necesitas es el mullido consuelo de un relato. La protección balsámica, adormecedora, de una mentira.

For the first time in a lifetime by the river he noticed—really noticed—that under a moonless sky the river makes its own mercurial light. Light that is also darkness, darkness that is also light.

I hardly suppose Wagner lost sleep worrying whether he'd hurt someone's feelings. But then he was a genius.

That is just a story, Jonathan." Jonathan considered. "Like Jesus, then." The parson frowned and was lost for words.

That he had been lucky in life and had much to be thankful for. That the woman waiting for him at home in bed was a kind and loving soul. And more: his knees didn't hurt as much as usual, and there was an expansiveness in his chest that reminded him of how it had been to be young.

Sarà che le emozioni hanno un odore, o un sapore; sarà che le trasmettiamo inconsapevolmente inviando vibrazioni nell'aria.

Certainly for myself I believe I would always wish to know the truth, but then I also wish to never have to face a truth I cannot bear. Being able to look truth in the face might be brave, or it might just mean you have been lucky in the truth you were dealt.

Pigs were funny creatures. You could almost think they were human the way they looked at you sometimes. Or was the pig remembering something? Yes, she realized, that was it. The pig looked exactly as if she were recollecting some happiness now lost, so that joy remembered was overlaid with present sorrow.

What's the value of happiness that can only come at the price of another person's despair?