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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: 64
Born: 1959
Born: November 16
Author
Editor
Language Teacher
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Susanna Mary Clarke
Pass
Roomful
Hour
Chatter
Silence
Torment
Worst
Strangers
Sort
Scholar
Hours
Idle
Love
Stranger
Solitude

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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But, though French, she was also very brave.
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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.
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Lovers are rarely the most rational beings in creation.
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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.
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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.
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To be more precise it was the color of heartache.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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He screamed. Mmm?' inquired the gentleman. I...I would never presume to interrupt you, sir. But the ground appears to be swallowing me up.' It is a bog,' said the gentleman, helpfully. It is certainly a most terrifying substance.
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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.
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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
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He smiles but rarely and watches other men to see when they laugh and then does the same.
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