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. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

155. “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

156. “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

157. “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

158. “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

159. “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

160. “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

161. “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

162. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

164. “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

165. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

167. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

170. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

172. “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

173. “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

174. “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

175. “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

176. “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!”

— Susanna Clarke

177. “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

178. “And so I have to ask Myself: whose memory is at fault? Mine or his? Might he in fact be remembering conversations that never happened?”

— Susanna Clarke

179. “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

180. “I have to consider the needs of the Biscuit-Box Man – and the Folded-Up Child – and the People of the Alcove. They only have me to take care of them. They are in unfamiliar surroundings and may feel disconcerted. I have to return them to their appointed places.”

— Susanna Clarke

181. “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

182. “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.”

— Susanna Clarke

183. “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

184. “Chaston wrote that a great many fairies harboured a vague sense of having been treated badly by the English. Though it was a mystery to Chaston – as it is to me – why they should have thought so. In the houses of the great English magicians fairies were the first among the servants and sat in the best places after the magician and his lady.”

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

186. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

188. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

190. “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

191. “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

192. “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

193. “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

194. “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

195. “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

196. “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

197. “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

198. “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

199. “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

200. “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