Top 300 Susanna Clarke Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “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

252. “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

253. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

255. “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

256. “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

257. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

259. “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

260. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

262. “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

263. “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

264. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

266. “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

267. “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

268. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

271. “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

272. “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

273. “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

274. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

277. “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

278. “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

279. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

282. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

285. “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

286. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

289. “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

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

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

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

— Susanna Clarke

293. “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

294. “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

295. “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

296. “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

297. “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

298. “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

299. “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

300. “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