Quotes from Susanna Clarke

Some halls are blocked, while others are flooded. And

Um sistema moral que pune a mulher e isenta o homem de toda a culpa me parece assaz execrável.

For who can remain angry with Mr Segundus? I dare say there are people in the world who are able to resent goodness and amiability, whose spirits are irritated by gentleness- but I am glad to say that Jonathan Strange was not of their number.

Safe in his embrace, I wept for my lost Sanity.

Sir Doctor, we esteem very much the Hexenmeister of the Great Vellinton.

Yet within Mr Norrell's dry little heart there was as lively an ambition to bring back magic to England as would satisfied even Mr Honeyfoot, and it was with the intention of bring that ambition to a long-postponed fulfilment that Mr Norrell now proposed to go to London.

And she was quite tolerable to look at, you say?" said Mr Lascelles. "You never saw her?" said Drawlight. "Oh! she was a heavenly creature. Quite divine. An angel." "Indeed? And such a pinched-looking ruin of a thing now! I shall advise all the good-looking women of my acquaintance not to die," said Mr Lascelles.

There was no one there. Which is to say there was someone there. Miss Wintertowne lay upon the bed, but it would have puzzled philosophy to say now whether she were someone or no one at all. They

In the fairy's song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself.

The box was small and oblong and apparently made of silver and porcelain. It was a beautiful shade of blue, but then not exactly blue, it was more like lilac. But then, not exactly lilac either, since it had a tinge of grey in it. To be more precise, it was the color of heartache.

No matter how low the Government stood in the estimation of everyone, when the Foreign Secretary stood up and spoke – ah! how different everything seemed then! How quickly was every bad thing discovered to be the fault of the previous administration (an evil set of men who wedded general stupidity to wickedness of purpose). As

It seemed that it was not only live magicians which Mr. Norrell despised. He had taken the measure of all the dead ones too and found them wanting.

A well-informed mind, nice manners and a gentle nature - all of these are much more likely to contribute to a husband's happiness than mere transient beauty.

Rich old uncles who die are in shockingly short supply.

Excess of grief may bring on quite as fine a bout of madness an an excess of any thing else. Truth to tell, I was not quite myself for a time. Truth to tell, I was a little wild.

I suppose a magician might," he admitted, "but a gentleman never could.

Strange stepped outside and immediately he almost walked into Captain Hadley-Bright. I was told you were dead! he cried. I was sure you would be, replied Hadley-Bright. There was a pause. Both men felt faintly embarrassed. The ranks of dead and wounded stretched away upon all sides as far as the eye could see. Simply being alive at that moment seemed, in some indefinable way, ungentlemanly.

Childermass laughed. "You are right, Vinculus. You are not like the others. That is my life – there on the table. But you cannot read it. You are a strange creature – the very reverse of all the magicians of the last centuries. They were full of learning but had no talent. You have talent and no knowledge. You cannot profit by what you see.

I do not intend to go, in the space of one hour, from the helplessness of enchantment to another sort of helplessness!

Childermass was still there. He had taken his dinner at one of the tables and was now doing the household accounts. As Mr Norrell entered, he looked up and grinned. "I believe Mr Strange will do very well in the war, sir. He has already out-manoeuvred you." On

It was a dark day. A chill wind blew snowflakes against the window of Mr Norrell's library where Childermass sat writing business letters. Though it was only ten o'clock in the morning the candles were already lit. The only sounds were the coals being consumed in the grate and the scratch of Childermass's pen against the paper.

she bore so many of the signs and disfigurings of extreme old age that she was losing her resemblance to other human beings and began instead to resemble other orders of living creatures. Her arms lay in her lap, so extravagantly spotted with brown that they were like two fish. Her skin was the white, almost transparent skin of the extremely old, as fine and wrinkled as a spider's web, with veins of knotted blue.

But if you are going to take up a profession – and I cannot see why you should want one at all, now that you have come into your property – surely you can chuse something better than magic! It has no practical application.

Late in the afternoon we returned to the First Vestibule. Just before we parted Raphael said, 'I love the quiet here. No people!' She said the last part as if it were the greatest advantage of all. 'Don't you like the people in your own Halls?' I asked, puzzled. 'I like them,' she said, with no very great enthusiasm. 'Mostly I like them. Some of them. I don't always get them. They don't always get me.