Top 300 Susanna Clarke Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Strange a quite extraordinary number of books to read, and said that he expected him to have read them by the end of the week.”

— Susanna Clarke

252. “I have never seen a live monkey in the House.”

— Susanna Clarke

253. “Ela usava um vestido da cor das tempestades, das sombras e da chuva, e um colar de promessas quebradas e arrependimentos.”

— Susanna Clarke

254. “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

255. “He had a very young man’s belief in the absolute rightness of his own cause and the absolute wrongness of everyone else’s.”

— Susanna Clarke

256. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

258. “But for the rest nothing amused him; nothing satisfied him. All was shadows, emptiness, echoes and dust.”

— Susanna Clarke

259. “I no longer feel quite so alarmed when a nonsensical word in my Journal gives rise to a mental image that I cannot account for. Do not be anxious, I tell Myself. It is the House. It is the House enlarging your understanding.”

— Susanna Clarke

260. “Strange finished: “People have such odd notions about magicians. They wanted me to tell them about vampyres.”

— Susanna Clarke

261. “Perhaps the wisdom of birds resides, not in the individual, but in the flock, the congregation.”

— Susanna Clarke

262. “Without the journals I would be all at sea.”

— Susanna Clarke

263. “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

264. “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

265. “Where in the world have you been?” demanded Strange. “Walking,” she said. Her voice was just as it had always been. “Walking! Arabella, are you quite mad? In three feet of snow? Where?” “In the dark woods,” she said, “among my soft-sleeping brothers and sisters. Across the high moors among the sweet-scented ghosts of my brothers and sisters long dead. Under the grey sky through the dreams and murmurs of my brothers and sisters yet to come.” Strange stared at her. “What?”

— Susanna Clarke

266. “She had the sweetest way of saying my name and smiling at the same time, and every time she did so, my heart turned over.”

— Susanna Clarke

267. “The House was particularly silent. No birds flew; no birds sang. Where had they all gone? It seemed they found the cloud-haunted World as oppressive as I did. In the Sixth Western Hall I found them at last. They were gathered there, perched on the Shoulders and Heads of every Statue, on Plinths and on Columns, sitting silently, waiting.”

— Susanna Clarke

268. “Batter-Sea is not a word,’ I said at last. ‘It has no referent. There is nothing in the World corresponding to that combination of sounds.”

— Susanna Clarke

269. “Nothing, I believe, inspires a man with such eagerness to begin his day’s work as the sight of his instruments neatly laid out.”

— Susanna Clarke

270. “It seemed that it was not only live magicians which Mr. Norrell despised. He had taken the measure of all the dead ones too and found them wanting.”

— Susanna Clarke

271. “Today the subject of my research is’ – at this point he looked up from what he was doing and smiled at me – ‘you.’ He has a most charming smile when he remembers to use it. ‘Really?’ I said. ‘What are you trying to find out? Do you have a hypothesis about me?’ ‘I do.’ ‘What is it?’ ‘I can’t tell you that. It might influence the data.’ ‘Oh! Yes. That is true. Sorry.’ ‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘It’s natural to be curious.”

— Susanna Clarke

272. “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

273. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

275. “He was one of those people whose ideas are too lively to be confined in their brains and spill out into the world to the consternation of passers-by.”

— Susanna Clarke

276. “I have known for many years that The Other does not revere the House in the same way I do, but it still shocks me when he talks like this. How can a man as intelligent as him say there is nothing alive in this House?”

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

278. “Brilliant! Thank you! But what I value even more than the shoes themselves is the proof they give of our friendship! I consider the possession of such a friend as you to be one of the greatest happinesses of my Life!”

— Susanna Clarke

279. “I am not home. I am here.”

— Susanna Clarke

280. “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

281. “Oh, quite!” agreed Byron. “I was with him again a few hours ago and could not get him to talk of any thing but his dead wife and how she is not really dead, but merely enchanted. And now he shrouds himself in Darkness and works Black Magic! There is something rather admirable in all this, do you not agree?”

— Susanna Clarke

282. “Several people seized Strange bodily. One man started shaking him vigorously, as though he thought that he might in this way dispel any magic before it took effect.”

— Susanna Clarke

283. “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

284. “And where were you?’ he asks. ‘While you were gone?’ ‘I was in a house with many rooms. The sea sweeps through the house. Sometimes it swept over me, but always I was saved.”

— Susanna Clarke

285. “I rained every time I moved.”

— Susanna Clarke

286. “Let us examine the case of rings. Rings have long been considered peculiarly suitable for this sort of magic by virtue of their small size.”

— Susanna Clarke

287. “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

288. “Byron!” exclaimed the little man. “Really? Dear me! Mad, and a friend of Lord Byron!” He sounded as if he did not know which was worse.”

— Susanna Clarke

289. “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

290. “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

291. “I left the Embrace of the Faun and wandered miserably through the House. I believed that I was mad – or that I had been mad – or else that I was becoming mad now. Whichever way it was, it was a terrifying prospect. After a while I decided that this way of going on did no good at all.”

— Susanna Clarke

292. “He has a most charming smile when he remembers to use it.”

— Susanna Clarke

293. “Once again I took my Index and Journals to the Fifth Northern Hall and sat down opposite the Statue of the Gorilla. May his Strength and Resolution give me courage!”

— Susanna Clarke

294. “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

295. “But though he had no striking vices, his virtues were perhaps almost as hard to define.”

— Susanna Clarke

296. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

298. “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

299. “There is a thing that I know but always forget: Winter is hard.”

— Susanna Clarke

300. “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