Top 300 Susanna Clarke Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “She preferred those occupations that require no companion. She walked alone, rad alone, sat alone in the sittingroom or in the ray of faint sunshine which sometimes penetrated the little courtyard ab about one o’clock. She was less open-hearted and confiding than before; it was as if someone – not necessarily Jonathan Strange – had disappointed her and she was determined to be more independent in future. pg. 675.”

— Susanna Clarke

202. “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

203. “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

204. “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

205. “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

206. “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

207. “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

208. “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

209. “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

210. “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

211. “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

212. “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

213. “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

214. “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

215. “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

216. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

218. “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

219. “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

220. “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

221. “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

222. “Like Mrs Pleasance I always fancy that misers are old. I cannot tell why this should be since I am sure that there are as many young misers as old. As to whether or not Mr Norrell was in fact old, he was the sort of man who had been old at seventeen.”

— Susanna Clarke

223. “The brown fields were partly flooded; they were strung with chains of chill, grey pools. The pattern of the pools had meaning. The pools had been written on to the fields by the rain. The pools were a magic worked by the rain, just as the tumbling of the black birds against the grey was a spell that the sky was working and the motion of grey-brown grasses was a spell that the wind made. Everything had meaning.”

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

225. “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

226. “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

227. “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

228. “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

229. “The rooks made a fuss at my approach. Yes, yes. I am glad to see you too, I told them. Only I have things to do today and cannot stop for a long conversation.”

— Susanna Clarke

230. “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

231. “In a war one is either living like a prince or a vagabond. I.”

— Susanna Clarke

232. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

234. “There was a tall, sensible man in the room called Thorpe, a gentleman with very little magical learning, but a degree of common sense rare in a magician.”

— Susanna Clarke

235. “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

236. “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

237. “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

238. “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

239. “Mr Murray was sorry to find that his two authors could not agree better, but he reflected that it probably could not be helped since both men were famous for quarrelling: Strange with Norrell, and Byron with practically everybody.3 When.”

— Susanna Clarke

240. “Why do pretty women always have such herds of relatives?”

— Susanna Clarke

241. “But according to the Essay on the Extraordinary Revival of English Magic we have no business even to wonder about such things. According to Mr NORRELL and Lord PORTISHEAD the Modern Magician ought not to meddle with things only half-understood. But I say that it is precisely because these things are only half-understood that we must study them.”

— Susanna Clarke

242. “We lapsed into silence again. There seemed nothing more to say. I was shocked by his description of 16’s wickedness. To be opposed to Reason itself!”

— Susanna Clarke

243. “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

244. “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

245. “The dialogue that happened between the ancients and the world was not simply something that happened in their heads; it was something that happened in the actual world. The way the Ancients 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 – intelligible and articulate – it was also persuadable.”

— Susanna Clarke

246. “If I leave, then the House will have no Inhabitant and how will I bear the thought of it Empty? Yet the simple fact is that if I remain in these Halls I will be alone.”

— Susanna Clarke

247. “Two days ago I gathered together supplies for the journey: food, blankets, a small saucepan in which to heat water and some rags.”

— Susanna Clarke

248. “There are some things which have no business being put into books for all the world to read.”

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

250. “A well-informed mind, nice manners and a gentle nature – all of these are much more likely to contribute to a husband’s happiness than mere transient beauty.”

— Susanna Clarke