Oh! And they read English novels! David! Did you ever look into an English novel? Well, do not trouble yourself. It is nothing but a lot of nonsense about girls with fanciful names getting married.

— Susanna Clarke

Perhaps I am too tame, too domestic a magician. But how does one work up a little madness? I meet with mad people every day in the street, but I never thought before to wonder how they got mad. Perhaps I should go wandering on lonely moors and barren shores. That is always a popular place for lunatics - in novels and plays at any rate. Perhaps wild England will make me mad.

— Susanna Clarke

Such nonsense!" declared Dr Grey steel. "Whoever heard of cats doing anything useful!"" Except for staring at one in a supercilious manner," said Strange. "That has a sort of moral usefulness, I suppose, in making one feel uncomfortable and encouraging sober reflection upon one's imperfections.

— Susanna Clarke

That will teach me to meddle with magic meant for kings! Morrell is right. Some magic is not meant for ordinary magicians. Presumably John Glass knew what to do with this horrible knowledge. I do not.

— Susanna Clarke

The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had been banished to the island of Elba. However, His Imperial Majesty had some doubts whether a quiet island life would suit him - he was, after all, accustomed to governing a large proportion of the known world.

— Susanna Clarke

The pools had been written onto the fields by the rain. The pools were a magic worked by the rain, just as the tumbling of the black birds against the gray was a spell that the sky was working and the motion of gray-brown grasses was a spell that the wind made. Everything had meaning.

— Susanna Clarke

There are people in this world, whose lives are nothing but a burden to them. A black veil stands between them and the world. They are utterly alone. They are like shadows in the night, shut off from joy and all gentle human emotions, unable to even give comfort to each other. Their days are full of nothing but darkness, misery and solitude.

— Susanna Clarke

There is nothing else in magic but the wild thought of the bird as it casts itself into the void. There is no creature upon the earth with such potential for magic. Even the least of them may fly straight out of this world and come by chance to the Other Lands. Where does the wind come from that blows upon your face, that fans the pages of your book? Where the harm-scarum magic of small wild creatures meets the magic of Man, where the language of the wind and the rain and the trees can be understood, there we will find the Raven King.

— Susanna Clarke

Time and I have quarrelled. All hours are midnight now. I had a clock and a watch, but I destroyed them both. I could not bear the way they mocked me.

— Susanna Clarke

When you're writing, you're creating something out of nothing ... A successful piece of writing is like doing a successful piece of m

— Susanna Clarke