I feel very much at home in the early nineteenth century and am not inclined to leave it. Susanna Clarke More Quotes by Susanna Clarke More Quotes From Susanna Clarke He gave her his heart. She took it and placed it quietly in the pocket of her gown. No one observed what she did. Susanna Clarke gowns pockets heart I know magicians and I know magic and I say this: all magicians lie and this one more than most. Susanna Clarke magician magic lying 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 sight rain blue It would need someone very remarkable to recover your name, Stephen, someone of rare perspicacity, with extraordinary talents and incomparable nobility of character. Me, in fact. Susanna Clarke names character needs Alan Moore is a peculiarly unsung triumph of British culture, and Northampton, where he was born in 1953, the son of brewery worker Ernest and printer Sylvia, is where you must go to find him. Susanna Clarke you born culture son The phone conversations about a possible TV series of 'Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell' stretch back years, but now that the moment has come, now that I am actually here at Wentworth Woodhouse, I lose my bearings. Susanna Clarke phone lose i-am moment Nothing, I find, has prepared me for the sight of my own characters walking about. A playwright or screenwriter must expect it; a novelist doesn't and naturally concludes that she has gone mad. Susanna Clarke nothing me my-own walking I first became an Alan Moore fan in Covent Garden on a Saturday afternoon in 1987, when I bought a copy of 'Watchmen,' his graphic novel about ageing superheroes and nuclear apocalypse. Susanna Clarke copy afternoon saturday garden I had always been fascinated by comics, but it had taken me several weeks to make up my mind to buy 'Watchmen'; for someone on a publisher's assistant's salary, it was some quite unheard-of sum of money. Susanna Clarke someone me money mind It's not easy to convey to someone who doesn't read comics just how Alan Moore has dominated the field since 'Watchmen.' Susanna Clarke how someone just easy I could always imagine more interesting places to be than where I was. And more interesting people than me being there. Eventually, this led to making up stories and writing things down. Susanna Clarke down me writing people I always really liked magicians. I'm not even sure why - except that they know things other people don't, and they live in untidy rooms full of strange objects. Susanna Clarke live know strange people In 'Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell,' I wanted to create the most convincing story of magic and magicians that I could. Susanna Clarke story create magic strange I can write most places. I particularly like writing on trains. Being between places is quite liberating, and looking out of the window, watching a procession of landscapes and random-ish objects, is very good for stories. Susanna Clarke looking good i-can window One way of grounding the magic is by putting in lots of stuff about street lamps, carriages, and how difficult it is to get good servants. Susanna Clarke street good magic way I had to restrain myself from buying a book on 19th-century fruit knives. Susanna Clarke myself fruit buying book You can get this feeling of the English or Scottish or Irish or Welsh fairy, but it is by nature very elusive. It would be possible to pin down a German fairy, but the English one just vanishes, becomes the shadow under the trees. Susanna Clarke feeling you shadow nature I always start out saying exactly what everybody looks like. I don't know why. Susanna Clarke saying start know looks It's funny, because I don't think of myself as a novelist. I think of myself as a writer. Susanna Clarke i-think myself think funny I tell stories. I kind of stumbled on that by trying to combine Jane Austen and magic. Susanna Clarke tell magic kind trying
