Top 300 Susanna Clarke Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “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

202. “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

203. “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

204. “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

205. “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

206. “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

207. “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

208. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

210. “The walls were hung with a series of gigantic paintings in gilded frames of great complexity, all depicting the city of Venice, but the day was overcast, a cold stormy rain had set in, and Venice – that city built of equal parts of sunlit marble and sunlit sea – was drowned in a London gloom.”

— Susanna Clarke

211. “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.”

— Susanna Clarke

212. “A blush rose to my face. I fixed my eyes on the Pavement. The Other was so neat, so elegant in his suit and his shining shoes. I, on the other hand, was not neat. My clothes were ragged and faded, rotten with the Sea Water I fished in. I hated drawing his attention to this contrast between us, but nevertheless he had asked me and so I must answer. I said, ‘What changed was that I used to have shoes. Now I have none.”

— Susanna Clarke

213. “I estimate that in six months’ time the bones will be white and clean. I will gather them up and take them to the empty niche in the third north-western hall. I will place Valentine Ketterley next to the biscuit-box man. In the middle I will place the long bones tied together with twine. On the right I will place the skull. On the left I will place a box containing all the small bones.”

— Susanna Clarke

214. “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

215. “The Waters covered me and for a moment I was surrounded by the strange silence that comes when the Sea sweeps over you and drowns it own sounds.”

— Susanna Clarke

216. “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.”

— Susanna Clarke

217. “Birds are not difficult to understand. Their behaviour tells me what they are thinking. Generally it runs along the lines of: Is this food? Is this? What about this? This might be food. I am almost certain that this is. Or occasionally: It is raining. I do not like it.”

— Susanna Clarke

218. “At the last moment the albatross swung over my left shoulder. I fell to the Pavement. He flapped his wings in a frantic, panicked sort of way, stuck out his wiry pink legs and tumbled out of the Air into a sort of heap on the Pavement. In the Air he was a miraculous being – a Heavenly Being – but on the Stones of the Pavement he was mortal and subject to the same embarrassments and clumsiness as other mortals.”

— Susanna Clarke

219. “This search that you and I are embarked on, it’s a truly great project. Momentous. One of the most important in humanity’s history. 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.”

— Susanna Clarke

220. “But I haven’t got his mind and I haven’t got his memories. I don’t mean that he’s not here. He is here.’ I touched my breast. ‘But I think he’s asleep. He’s fine. You mustn’t worry about him.”

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

222. “At that moment their conversation was interrupted by a most barbaric sound – a great horn was being blown. A number of men rushed forward and heaved the great town gates shut. Thinking that perhaps some danger threatened the town, Stephen looked round in alarm. “Sir, what is happening?” “Oh, it is these people’s custom to shut the gate every night against the wicked heathen,” said the gentleman, languidly, “by which they mean everyone except themselves. But.”

— Susanna Clarke

223. “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.”

— Susanna Clarke

224. “The idea of forty precious volumes being taken into a country in a state of war where they might get burnt, blown up, drowned or dusty was almost too horrible to contemplate. Mr Norrell did not know a great deal about war, but he suspected that soldiers are not generally your great respecters of books. They might put their dirty fingers on them. They might tear them! They might – horror of horrors! – read them and try the spells! Could soldiers read? Mr Norrell did not know.”

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

226. “It is my practice to index my Journal entries every other week or so. I find that this is more efficient than indexing them straight away. After some time has passed it is easier to separate the important from the ephemeral.”

— Susanna Clarke

227. “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

228. “From the open window came the mingled odours of horse-sweat, peaches and sour milk.”

— Susanna Clarke

229. “A heap of shining guineas was lying there. Mrs Brandy picked up one of the coins and examined it. It was as though she held a ball of soft yellow light with a coin at the bottom of it.”

— Susanna Clarke

230. “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.”

— Susanna Clarke

231. “Napoleon Buonaparte, it was said, was scouring France to find a magician of his own – but with no success. In London the Ministers were quite astonished to find that, for once, they had done something the Nation approved.”

— Susanna Clarke

232. “The little man was all smiling acquiescence.”

— Susanna Clarke

233. “This unsightly condition is only temporary. Don’t be sad. Don’t fear. I will place you somwhere where the fish and the birds can strip away all this broken flesh. It will soon be gone. Then you will be a handsome skull and handsome bones. I will put you in good order and you can rest in the Sunlight and Starlight.”

— Susanna Clarke

234. “I have never seen any indication that the World was coming to an End, but only the regular progression of Halls and Passageways into the Far Distance.”

— Susanna Clarke

235. “In familiar surroundings our manners are cheerful and easy, but only transport us to places where we know no one and no one knows us, and Lord! how uncomfortable we become!”

— Susanna Clarke

236. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.”

— Susanna Clarke

237. “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.”

— Susanna Clarke

238. “Raphael left, disappearing into the Shadowy Space between the two Minotaurs in the South-Eastern Corner of the Vestibule.”

— Susanna Clarke

239. “You have come here to build a nest. But you cannot find the materials you need. There is only cold, wet seaweed and you need something drier to make a cosy nest for your egg. Do not worry. I will help you. I have a supply of dry seaweed. Speaking as a non-avian, I feel sure that this would be a highly suitable building material. I will go and fetch it immediately.”

— Susanna Clarke

240. “It contained a spell for turning Members of Parliament into useful members of society and now, just when Uncle Auberon thought he had a use for it, he could not find it.”

— Susanna Clarke

241. “According to the second system I have given the years names like ‘The Year I named the Constellations’ and ‘The Year I counted and named the Dead’. I like this much more. It gives each year a character of its own. This is the system I shall use going forward.”

— Susanna Clarke

242. “This is what I call a Distributary World – it was created by ideas flowing out of another world. This world could not have existed unless that other world had existed first. Whether this world is still dependent on.”

— Susanna Clarke

243. “I must not become so absorbed in my scientific work that I forget to fish and end up with nothing to eat.”

— Susanna Clarke

244. “In the fairy’s song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself.”

— Susanna Clarke

245. “Arabella, like a sweet, compliant woman and good wife, put all thoughts of her new curtains aside for the moment and assured both gentlemen that in such a cause it was no trouble to her to wait.”

— Susanna Clarke

246. “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.”

— Susanna Clarke

247. “Sir, please do not do that,’ I said. ‘The Other says that 16 is a malevolent person.’ ‘Malevolent? I wouldn’t say so. No more than most people.”

— Susanna Clarke

248. “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

249. “In all these places I have stood in Doorways and looked ahead.”

— Susanna Clarke

250. “Some halls are blocked, while others are flooded. And.”

— Susanna Clarke