Quotes from Susanna Clarke

A man as talented and handsome as yourself ought not be a servant!" he said in a shocked tone. "He ought to be the ruler of a vast estate! What is beauty for, I should like to know, if not to stand as a visible sign of one's superiority to everyone else? But I see how it is! Your enemies have conspired together to deprive you of all your possessions and to cast you down among the ignorant and lowly!

What nobility of feeling!" he cried. "To sacrifice your own pleasure to preserve the comfort of others! Well, it is a thing, I confess, that would never occur to me.

Ah, but, sir," said Lascelles, "it is precisely by passing judgements upon other people's work and pointing out their errors that readers can be made to understand your own opinions better. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn a review to one's own ends. One only need mention the book once or twice and for the rest of the article one may develop one's theme just as one chuses. It is, I assure you, what every body else does.

He has a most charming smile when he remembers to use it.

But nothing, I find, has prepared me for the sight of my own characters walking about. A playwright or screenwriter must expect it; a novelist doesn't and naturally concludes that she has gone mad. (What do they need so many umbrellas for? Don't they realise that they are imaginary?)

Mr. Honeyfoot's post-chaise travelled through a world that seemed to contain a much higher proportion of chill grey sky and a much smaller one of solid comfortable earth than was usually the case.

an evil set of men who wedded general stupidity to wickedness of purpose).

would not, I imagine, suggest that it is the task of botanists to devise more flowers? Or that astronomers should labour to rearrange the stars? Magicians, Mr Segundus, study magic which was done long ago. Why should any one expect more?" An elderly gentleman with faint blue eyes and

room was crowded with officers bringing reports or collecting orders, or simply gathering gossip. At one end of the room was a very venerable, ornate and crumbling

Mr Norrell smiled for the first time – but it was an inward sort of smile.

I believe I have made my opinion of him pretty widely known, and though I have done myself no good by my honesty, I am pleased to say that I have done him some harm.

But the sound that came out of his mouth was no sound at all; it was the emptied skin of sound without flesh or bones.

He wished he had never come to London. He wished he had never undertaken to revive English magic. He wished he had stayed at Hurtfew Abbey, reading and doing magic for his own pleasure. None of it, he thought, was worth the loss of forty books.

Todo viajero tiene derecho a desahogar su frustración por la menor contrariedad escribiendo a sus amigos.

He thought that an hour or so of conversation might accomplish a great deal towards setting them upon that footing of perfect unreserve and confidence which was so much to be desired between husband and wife.

Bonifazia was an excellent servant, but much inclined to criticism and long explanations of why the instructions she had just been given were wrong or impossible to carry out.

The intention of the French was to cruise about the Bay of Biscay looking for British ships to capture or, if they were unable to do that, to prevent the British from doing any thing which they appeared to want to do.

The Pillar of Darkness has been a horror confined to Venice, which seemed - to the Paduans at least - a natural setting for horrors.

La magia no es respetable, caballero. No es... —buscó la palabra— seria. El gobierno no puede involucrarse en esas cosas.

Still the strange ships glittered and shone, and this led to some discussion as to what they might be made of. The Admiral thought perhaps iron or steel. (Metal ships indeed! The French are, as I have often supposed, a very whimsical nation.)

Strange smiled. Or rather he twisted something in his face and Sir Walter supposed that he was smiling. Sir Walter could not really recall what his smile had looked like before.

Nan told me Clegg had been hanged for stealing a book, but the charge Robert Findhelm brought against him was not theft. The charge Findhelm brought against him was book-murder.

In my agitation I leapt up and walked rapidly up and down the Hall. Oh, fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I muttered to Myself. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! After a minute or two of walking uselessly to and fro, I spoke to Myself sternly, telling Myself that it was no good bewailing the Past; what was needed now was to plan for the Future.

She had the sweetest way of saying my name and smiling at the same time, and every time she did so, my heart turned over.