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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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Susanna Clarke
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: November 16
Author
Editor
Language Teacher
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Susanna Mary Clarke
Hours
Idle
Love
Stranger
Solitude
Pass
Roomful
Hour
Chatter
Silence
Torment
Worst
Strangers
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Scholar

More quotes by Susanna Clarke

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Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic.
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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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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What nobility of feeling! To sacrifice your own pleasure to preserve the comfort of others! It is a thing, I confess, that would never occur to me.
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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A piece of writing is like a piece of magic. You create something out of nothing.
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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After two hours it stopped raining and in the same moment the spell broke, which Peroquet and the Admiral and Captain Jumeau knew by a curious twist of their senses, as if they had tasted a string quartet, or been, for a moment, deafened by the sight of colour blue.
Susanna Clarke
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It has been remarked (by a lady infinitely cleverer than the present author) how kindly disposed the world in general feels to young people who either die or marry.
Susanna Clarke
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He smiles but rarely and watches other men to see when they laugh and then does the same.
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
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This is a very grave matter, punishable by...well, I do not exactly know what, but something rather severe, I should imagine.
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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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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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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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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She wore a gown the color of storms, shadows, and rain and a necklace of broken promises and regrets.
Susanna Clarke
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Well, I suppose one ought not to employ a magician and then complain that he does not behave like other people.
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