Quotes from Susanna Clarke

The moral, as Mr. Drawlight explained it, was that if Mr. Norrell hoped to win friends for the cause of modern magic, he must insert a great many more French windows into his house.

No, indeed! she cried, all indignation. I have no notion of asking people to perform services for me which I can do perfectly well for myself. I do not intend to go, in the space of one hour, from the helplessness of enchantment to another sort of helplessness!

Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians.

To Strange's unnautical eye, it looked very much as if the ship had simply lain down and gone to sleep. He felt that if he had been the Captain he would have spoken to her sternly and made her get up again.

Then Mr. Norrell roused himself and took down five or six books in a great hurry and opened them up - presumably searching out those passages which were full of advice for magicians who wished to awaken dead young ladies.

Of course, as a model for my magician Strange is far from perfect --he lacks the true heroic nature; for that I shall be obliged to put in something of myself.

I could always imagine more interesting places to be than where I was. And more interesting people than me being there. Eventually, this led to making up stories and writing things down.

Strange began to laugh. 'Well, Henry, you can cease frowning at me. If I am a magician, I am a very indifferent one. Other adepts summon up fairy-spirits and long-dead kings. I appear to have conjured the spirit of a banker.

It was difficult to image quite where this gentleman [a statue] could have come from: he was a little too cheerful for a saint in a church and not quite comical enough for a coffee-house sign.

The way the ancient perceived the world was the way the world truly was. This gave them extraordinary influence and power. Reality was not only capable of taking part in a dialogue - intellegible and articulate - it was also persuadable.

After all," he thought, "what can a magician do against a lead ball? Between the pistol firing and his heart exploding, there is no time for magic.

I will concentrate on lending you the strength of my Spirit,' I said. 'Fine. Good. You do that.

Uncle Auberon (who was quite an old gentleman) had stopt listening to them both a while ago and had wandered off to resume his search for a book. It contained a spell for turning Members of Parliament into useful members of society and now, just when Uncle Auberon thought he had a use for it, he could not find it (though he had had it in his hand not a hundred years before). So Mr Goodfellow said nothing but quietly turned himself back into William Shakespeare.

Who was it that said a magician needs the subtlety of a Jesuit, the daring of a soldier and the wits of a thief? I believe it was meant for a insult, but it has some truth in it.

Magic (in the practical sense) was much fallen off. It had low connexions.

The King's Ministers had long treasured a plan to send the enemies of Britain bad dreams. The Foreign Secretary had first proposed it in January 1808 and for over a year Mr Norrell had industriously sent the Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte a bad dream each night, as a result of which nothing had happened.

I have been most industriously talking up your extraordinary powers to all my wide acquaintance,' continued Mr Drawlight. 'I have been your John the Baptist, sir, preparing the way for you!

In short they felt that they should like to have the pleasure of looking at Lady Pole again, and so they told Sir Walter - rather than asked him - that he missed his wife. He replied that he did not. But this was not allowed to be possible; it was well known that newly married gentlemen were never happy apart from their wives; the briefest of absences could depress a new husband's spirits and interfere with his digestion.

the silence of half a hundred cats is a peculiar thing, like fifty individual silences all piled one on top of another.

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 must get me a house, Childermass," he said. "Get me a house that says to those that visit it that magic is a respectable profession – no less than Law and a great deal more so than Medicine.

a book of magic should be written by a practising magician, rather than a theoretical magician or a historian of magic.

Richard Chaston (1620–95). Chaston wrote that men and fairies both contain within them a faculty of reason and a faculty of magic. In men reason is strong and magic is weak. With fairies it is the other way round: magic comes very naturally to them, but by human standards they are barely sane. 3

Every man and woman present thought how the neatly drawn lines and words upon the maps were in truth ice-covered pools and rivers, silent woods, frozen ditches and high, bare hills and every one of them thought how many sheep and cattle and wild creatures died in this season.