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Such nonsense! declared Dr Greysteel. 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

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Susanna Clarke
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: November 16
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Susanna Mary Clarke
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More quotes by Susanna Clarke

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Houses, like people, are apt to become rather eccentric if left too much on their own this house was the architectural equivalent of an old gentleman in a worn dressing-gown and torn slippers, who got up and went to bed at odd times of day, and who kept up a continual conversation with friends no one else could see.
Susanna Clarke
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You've got to sing like you don't need the money. You've got to love like you'll never get hurt. You've got to dance like there's nobody watching. You've got to come from the heart, if you want it to work.
Susanna Clarke
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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
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He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands.
Susanna Clarke
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But, though French, she was also very brave.
Susanna Clarke
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Well, Henry, you can cease frowning at me. If I am a magician, I am a very indifferent one. Other adepts summon up fairy-spirits and long-dead kings. I appear to have conjured the spirit of a banker.
Susanna Clarke
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For, though the room was silent, the silence of half a hundred cats is a peculiar thing, like fifty individual silences all piled one on top of another.
Susanna Clarke
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And the name of the one shall be Fearfulness. And the name of the other shall be Arrogance... Well, clearly you are not Fearfulness, so I suppose you must be Arrogance.' This was not very polite.
Susanna Clarke
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I have a scholar's love of silence and solitude. To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment.
Susanna Clarke
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I mean that two of any thing is a most uncomfortable number. One may do as he pleases. Six may get along well enough. But two must always struggle for mastery. Two must always watch each other. The eyes of all the world will be on two, uncertain which of them to follow.
Susanna Clarke
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The governess was not much liked in the village. She was too tall, too fond of books, too grave, and, a curious thing, never smiled unless there was something to smile at.
Susanna Clarke
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Ha!' said the tall man drily. 'He was in high luck. Rich old uncles who die are in shockingly short supply.
Susanna Clarke
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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 would.
Susanna Clarke
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Mr. Robinson was a polished sort of person. He was so clean and healthy and pleased about everything that he positively shone - which is only to be expected in a fairy or an angel, but is somewhat disconcerting in an attorney.
Susanna Clarke
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To be more precise it was the color of heartache.
Susanna Clarke
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It is these black clothes, said Strange. I am like a leftover piece of funeral, condemned to walk about the Town, frightening people into thinking of their own mortality.
Susanna Clarke
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There is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure - it is, after all, what everybody does all the time.
Susanna Clarke
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The land is all too shallow It is painted on the sky And trembles like the wind-shook rain When the Raven King passed by
Susanna Clarke
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Unfortunately, Childermass's French was so strongly accented by his native Yorkshire that Minervois did not understand and asked Strange if Childermass was Dutch.
Susanna Clarke
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And how shall I think of you?' He considered a moment and then laughed. 'Think of me with my nose in a book!
Susanna Clarke