Top 300 Susanna Clarke Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “In person he was rather tall and his figure was considered good. Some people thought him handsome, but this was not by any means the universal opinion. His face had two faults: a long nose and an ironic expression. It is also true that his hair had a reddish tinge and, as everybody knows, no one with red hair can ever truly be said to be handsome.”

— Susanna Clarke

152. “I am an anamnesiologist. I study what has been forgotten.”

— Susanna Clarke

153. “When she was a teenager D’Agostino told a friend that she wanted to go to university to study Death, Stars and Mathematics. Inexplicably the University of Manchester didn’t offer such a course, so she settled for Mathematics.”

— Susanna Clarke

154. “If I leave, then the House will have no Inhabitant and how will I bear the thought of it Empty?”

— Susanna Clarke

155. “The knowledge we seek isn’t something new. It’s old. Really old. Once upon a time people possessed it and they used it to do great things, miraculous things. They should have held on to it. They should have respected it. But they didn’t. They abandoned it for the sake of something they called progress. And it’s up to us to get it back. We’re not doing this for ourselves; we’re doing it for humanity.”

— Susanna Clarke

156. “Hush, sir!” whispered the man, “Your voice. It is too loud. You will wake him up!” “Wake him up? Who?” “The man under the hedge, sir. He is a magician. Did you never hear that if you wake a magician before his time, you risk bringing his dreams out of his head into the world?” “And who knows what horrors he is dreaming of!” agreed another man, in a whisper.”

— Susanna Clarke

157. “Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.”

— Susanna Clarke

158. “Sir Walter took this to mean he had not –which Sir Walter was glad of, for Sir Walter thought a great deal of a man’s having a profession and believed that useful, steady occupation might cure many things which other remedies could not.”

— Susanna Clarke

159. “Stephen had never seen a landscape so calculated to reduce the onlooker to utter despair in an instant. “This is one of your kingdoms, I suppose, sir?” he said. “My kingdoms?” exclaimed the gentleman in surprize. “Oh, no! This is Scotland!”

— Susanna Clarke

160. “Of all the tiresome situations in the world, thought the Prince Regent, the most tiresome was to rise from one’s bed in a state of uncertainty as to whether or not one was the ruler of Great Britain.”

— Susanna Clarke

161. “He had the odd idea that, though only a whisper, it could have passed through stone or iron or brass. It could have spoken to you from a thousand feet beneath the earth and you would have still heard it. It could have shattered precious stones and brought on madness.”

— Susanna Clarke

162. “Country gentlemen who read in their newspapers the speeches of this or that Minister would mutter to themselves that he was certainly a clever fellow. But the country gentlemen were not made comfortable by this thought. The country gentlemen had a strong suspicion that cleverness was somehow unBritish.”

— Susanna Clarke

163. “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.”

— Susanna Clarke

164. “He walked around Mr Norrell slowly, considering him from every angle. Then, most disconcerting of all, he plucked Mr Norrell’s wig from his head and looked underneath, as if Mr Norrell were a cooking pot on the fire and he wished to know what was for dinner.”

— Susanna Clarke

165. “May the House in its Beauty shelter us both.”

— Susanna Clarke

166. “Though all the houses of Venice are strange and old, those of the Ghetto seemed particularly so – as if queerness and ancientness were two of the commodities this mercantile people dealt in and they had constructed their houses out of them. Though all the streets of Venice are melancholy, these streets had a melancholy that was quite distinct – as if Jewish sadness and Gentile sadness were made up according to different recipes. Yet.”

— Susanna Clarke

167. “Since the World began it is certain that there have existed fifteen people.”

— Susanna Clarke

168. “My father believed that, in understanding and in knowledge of right and wrong and in many other things, women are men’s equals and I am entirely of his opinion.”

— Susanna Clarke

169. “Don’t disappear,’ I tell her sternly. ‘Do not disappear.’ She makes a rueful, amused face. ‘I won’t,’ she says. ‘We can’t keep rescuing each other,’ I say. ‘It’s ridiculous.’ She smiles. It is a smile with a little sadness in it. But she still wears the perfume – the first thing I ever knew of her – and it still makes me think of Sunlight and Happiness.”

— Susanna Clarke

170. “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.”

— Susanna Clarke

171. “I knew as I looked at it that there was something very strange here. But the strange thing was so strange, so entirely incomprehensible that I found it difficult to form coherent thoughts about it. I could see the strangeness with my eyes, but I could not think it with my mind.”

— Susanna Clarke

172. “Treat this as a warning, I said. Be on your guard. 16 will not wear his ill intentions in his face. It is very likely he will be pleasing to the eyes. His manners will be friendly and insinuating. That is how he intends to destroy you.”

— Susanna Clarke

173. “And yet, you know,” continued Lady Pole, scarcely attending to her, “battles have been fought at some time or other almost everywhere. I remember learning in my schoolroom how London was once the scene of a particularly fierce battle. The people were put to death in horrible ways and the city was burnt to the ground. We are surrounded by the shadows of violence and misery all the days of our life and it seems to me that it matters very little whether any material sign remains or not.”

— Susanna Clarke

174. “Rich old uncles who die are in shockingly short supply.”

— Susanna Clarke

175. “Other countries,” he said, “have stories of kings who will return at times of great need. Only in England is it part of the constitution.”

— Susanna Clarke

176. “This experience led me to form a hypothesis: perhaps the wisdom of birds resides, not in the individual, but in the flock, the congregation. I have tried to think of an experiment that would test this theory. The problem, as I see it, is that it is impossible to know in advance when such events will occur; and so the only viable course of action is months – more likely years – of careful observation and meticulous record keeping.”

— Susanna Clarke

177. “I remembered how Raphael had wondered which of the People of the Alcove had been murdered and how the simple fact of her posing the question had made the whole World seem a darker, sadder Place. Perhaps that is what it is like being with other people. Perhaps even people you like and admire immensely can make you see the World in ways you would rather not. Perhaps that is what Raphael means.”

— Susanna Clarke

178. “It is January and I am arriving at an English country house in Yorkshire. Fog and rain shroud the park. The interior is a dim labyrinth of splendid but desolate rooms, full of winter shadows and echoing footsteps.”

— Susanna Clarke

179. “Lord Wellington is in the Lines.” It was a very curious phrase and if Strange had been obliged to hazard a guess at its meaning he believed he would have said it was some sort of slang for being drunk.”

— Susanna Clarke

180. “Books and papers are the basis of good scholarship and sound knowledge,” declared Mr Norrell primly. “Magic is to be put on the same footing as the other disciplines.”

— Susanna Clarke

181. “Saint Bridget said she was sorry to hear it. “But I do not think I am the proper person to help you. I look after milkmaids and dairymen. I encourage the butter to come and the cheeses to ripen. I have nothing to do with cheese that has been eaten by the wrong person. Saint Nicholas looks after thieves and stolen property. Or there is Saint Alexander of Comana who loves Charcoal Burners. Perhaps,” she added hopefully, “you would like to pray to one of them?”

— Susanna Clarke

182. “This is where I lost Myself. I lost Myself in long, sick fantasies of revenge.”

— Susanna Clarke

183. “There is at least as much contrariness in your character as in mine. Why not come and be contrary with me?”

— Susanna Clarke

184. “I paused and examined Myself for signs of imminent madness or tendencies to self-destruction. Finding none, I read further.”

— Susanna Clarke

185. “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.”

— Susanna Clarke

186. “The Beams of the Declining Sun shone through the Windows of the Lower Halls, striking the Surface of the Waves and making ripples of golden Light flow across the Ceiling of the Staircase and over the Faces of the Statues.”

— Susanna Clarke

187. “The trees, the stones and the earth had taken him inside themselves, but in their shape it was possible still to discern something of the man he had once been.”

— Susanna Clarke

188. “I went to the North-Eastern Corner and climbed up to the Statue of an Angel caught on a Rose Bush. I fetched out my brown leather messenger bag. I took all of my Journals out of it. There were nine of them. Just nine. I did not find twenty others that I had inexplicably overlooked until this moment.”

— Susanna Clarke

189. “Once, men and women were able to turn themselves into eagles and fly immense distances. They communed with rivers and mountains and received wisdom from them. They felt the turning of the stars inside their own minds. My contemporaries did not understand this. They were all enamoured with the idea of progress and believed that whatever was new must be superior to what was old. As if merit was a function of chronology!”

— Susanna Clarke

190. “That was the clock striking half-past one o’clock!” said Drawlight suddenly. “How lonely it sounds! Ugh! All the horrid things one reads of in novels always happen just as the church bell tolls or the clock strikes some hour or other in a dark house!”

— Susanna Clarke

191. “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.”

— Susanna Clarke

192. “Today it stopped raining. The World became light of Heart again.”

— Susanna Clarke

193. “They have Matthew Rose Sorensen back – or so they believe. A man with his face and voice and gestures moves about the world, and that is enough for them.”

— Susanna Clarke

194. “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.”

— Susanna Clarke

195. “The Tides themselves are full of movement and power so that, while they may not exactly be alive, neither are they not-alive.”

— Susanna Clarke

196. “He stood motionless for a long moment. I had told him to reflect on his wickedness. Was that what he was doing? Suddenly he knelt and began to write rapidly. No one has ever written to me before.”

— Susanna Clarke

197. “I will concentrate on lending you the strength of my Spirit,’ I said. ‘Fine. Good. You do that.”

— Susanna Clarke

198. “Even then I knew that the Tides were not random. I saw that if I could record and document them, I might be able to predict their appearance. That was the beginning of my Table.”

— Susanna Clarke

199. “Ketterley shrugged. ‘A vision of cosmic grandeur, I suppose. A symbol of the mingled glory and horror of existence. No one gets out alive.”

— Susanna Clarke

200. “On the other side of the Courtyard I saw the Other looking out of a Window. The Window was tall and dark; the Other’s noble head with its high forehead and neatly trimmed beard was framed in one Corner. He was lost in thought as he so often is. I waved to him. He did not see me. I waved more extravagantly. I jumped up and down with great energy. But the Windows of the House are many and he did not see me.”

— Susanna Clarke