Top 300 Susanna Clarke Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “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

152. “Another room was almost empty except for a doll’s house standing on a table in the middle of the floor; the doll’s house was an exact copy of the real house–except that inside the doll’s house a number of smartly dressed dolls were enjoying a peaceful and rational existence together...”

— Susanna Clarke

153. “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

154. “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

155. “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

156. “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

157. “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

158. “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

159. “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.”

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

161. “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

162. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

166. “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

167. “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

168. “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

169. “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

170. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

172. “There are books about magic and there are books of magic, and the price of the latter is far above rubies.”

— Susanna Clarke

173. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

175. “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

176. “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

177. “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

178. “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

179. “Raphael nodded slowly. ‘That’s OK,’ she said. ‘There’s plenty of time.’ She put out her hand and rather awkwardly – but also gently – put her hand on my shoulder. Instantly, and to my huge embarrassment, I started crying. Great creaking sobs rose up in my chest and tears sprouted from my eyes. I did not think that it was me who was crying; it was Matthew Rose Sorensen crying through my eyes. It lasted for a long time until it tailed off into braying, hiccupping gulps for Air.”

— Susanna Clarke

180. “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

181. “If ever I find your remains I will bring you offerings of food and drink. If it seems to me that no one living is caring for you then I will gather up your bones and bring them to my own Halls. I will put you in good order and lay you with my own Dead. Then you will not be alone.”

— Susanna Clarke

182. “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

183. “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.”

— Susanna Clarke

184. “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

185. “They looked at each other for a long moment, and in that moment, all was as it used to be. It was as if they had never parted. She did not offer to go into the Darkness with him, and he did not ask her.”

— Susanna Clarke

186. “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

187. “So this, as far as I can tell, is what the birds told me. A message from afar. Obscure Writing. Innocence eroded.”

— Susanna Clarke

188. “I thought that I was going to die; or else that I would be swept away to Unknown Halls, far from the rush and thrum of Familiar Tides. I clung on.”

— Susanna Clarke

189. “This house,” he told them at last, “is disordered and dirty. Its inhabitants have idled away their days in pointless pleasures and in celebrations of past cruelties – things that ought not to be remembered, let alone celebrated. I have often observed it and often regretted it. All these faults, I shall in time set right.”

— Susanna Clarke

190. “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.”

— Susanna Clarke

191. “Two memories. Two bright minds which remember past events differently. It is an awkward situation. There exists no third person to say which of us is correct.”

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

193. “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

194. “But these people were judged very stupid by their friends. Was not Jonathan Strange known to be precisely the sort of whimsical, contradictory person who would publish against himself?”

— Susanna Clarke

195. “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

196. “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

197. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

199. “I remember how the smell of the rain that pervaded the streets did not die away as I entered, but somehow intensified; inside the house there was a smell of rain, clouds and air, a smell of limitless space. A smell of the sea.”

— Susanna Clarke

200. “The first ten books Mr. Segundus looked at were worthless – books of sermons and moralizing from the last century, or descriptions of persons whom no one living cared about. The next fifty were very much the same. He began to think his task would soon be done. But then he stumbled upon some very interesting and unusual works of geology, philosophy and medicine. He began to feel more sanguine.”

— Susanna Clarke