"'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 (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"It may be laid down as a general rule that if a man begins to sing, no one will take any notice of his song except his fellow human beings. This is true even if his song is surpassingly beautiful. Other men may be in raptures at his skill, but the rest of creation is, by and large, unmoved. Perhaps a cat or a dog may look at him; his horse, if it is an exceptionally intelligent beast, may pause in cropping the grass, but that is the extent of it. But when the fairy sang, the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. 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. In the fairy's song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself."
— Susanna Clarke

"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 (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell)

""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."

From "Tom Brightwind""
— Susanna Clarke

"She wore a gown the color of storms, shadows, and rain and a necklace of broken promises and regrets."
— Susanna Clarke

"..The argument he was conducting with his neighbor as to whether the English magician had gone mad because he was a magician, or because he was English."
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"This is a very grave matter, punishable by...well, I do not exactly know what, but something rather severe, I should imagine."
— Susanna Clarke

"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 (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"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 (Jonathan Strange i pan Norrell - część 3)

"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 (Jonathan Strange i pan Norrell - część 2)

"How quickly was every bad thing discovered to be the fault of the previous administration (an evil set of men who wedded general stupidity to wickedness of purpose)."
— Susanna Clarke

"Mr. Honeyfoot did not propose going quite so far --indeed he did not wish to go far at all because it was winter and the roads where very shocking."
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"Bryon tilted his head to a very odd angle, half-closed his eyes and composed his features to suggest that he was about to expire from chronic indigestion."
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"'You mean to say he became mad deliberately?'
'...Nothing is more likely,' said the duke."
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"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 (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"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

"Strange stared thoughtfully at her for several seconds, so that Arabella mistakenly supposed he must be considering what she had just said. But when he spoke it was only to say in a tone of gentle reproof, "My love, you are standing on my papers." He took her arm and moved her gently aside."
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange i pan Norrell - część 2)

"'And what do you keep in such a pretty little box, sir? Snuff?'
'Oh, no! It is a great treasure of mine that I wish Lady Pole to wear tonight!' He opened the box and showed Stephen a small, white finger."
— Susanna Clarke

"“A piece of writing is like a piece of magic. You create something out of nothing.”"
— Susanna Clarke

"To be more precise it was the color of heartache."
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"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 (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"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 (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"I am rather of the opinion that in England a gentleman's dreams are his own private concern. I fancy there is a law in that effect and, if there is not, why, Parliament should certainly be made to pass one immediately! It ill becomes another man to invite himself into them."
— Susanna Clarke

"It was difficult to image quite where this gentleman [a statue] could have come from: he was a little too cheerful for a saint in a church and not quite comical enough for a coffee-house sign."
— Susanna Clarke

"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

"The old King is dead. The new King approaches! And at his approach the world sheds its sorrow. The sings of the old King dissolve like morning mist! The world assumes the character of the new. His virtues fill up the wood and world!"
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange i pan Norrell - część 3)

"A Nottinghamshire man called Tubbs wished very much to see a fairy and, from thinking of fairies day and night, and from reading all sorts of odd books about them, he took it into his head that his coachman was a fairy."
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"And such a pinched-looking ruin of a thing now! I shall advice all the good-looking woman of my acquaintance not to die."
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"John Longridge, the cook at Harley-street, had suffered from low spirits for more than thirty years, and he was quick to welcome Stephen as a newcomer to the freemasonry of melancholy."
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"One of them is married and another is engaged and the third cannot make up her mind."
— Susanna Clarke

"Of course, as a model for my magician Strange is far from perfect --he lacks the true heroic nature; for that I shall be obliged to put in something of myself."
— Susanna Clarke

"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 (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"As a sad, grey dawn broke over the hillside he came upon a ruined cottage [named Broken-Heart Farm] which did not so much seem to have broken its heart, as its neck."
— Susanna Clarke

"Lovers are rarely the most rational beings in creation..."
— Susanna Clarke

"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 (The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories)

"But when the fairy sang the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. 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. In the fairy’s song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself."
— Susanna Clarke

"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 (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"There is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure - it is, after all, what everybody does all the time."
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"He did not feel as if he were inside a Pillar of Darkness in the middle of Yorkshire; he felt more as if the rest of the world had fallen away and he and Strange were left alone upon a solitary island or promontory. The idea distressed him a great deal less than one might have supposed. He had never much cared for the world and he bore its loss philosophically."
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

""I have always heard that Italian women are rather fierce."
-Colonel DeLancey
-Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell "
— Susanna Clarke

"Which demomstrates the sad poverty of English launguage..."
— Susanna Clarke

"But now there were ten bells. And the bell for Lost-Hope was ringing violently."
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"Gentleman are often invited to stay in other people's houses. Rooms hardly ever are."
— Susanna Clarke

"The pigment must be mixed with the tears of spinsters of good family, who must live long lives of impeccable virtue and die without ever having had a day of true happiness."
— Susanna Clarke

"He had once found himself in a room with Lady Bessborough's long-haired white cat. He happened to be dressed in an immaculate black coat and trousers, and was there thoroughly alarmed by the cat's stalking round and round and making motions as if it proposed to sit upon him. He waited until he believed himself to be unobserved, then he picked it up, opened a window, and tossed it out. Despite falling three storeys to the ground, the cat survived, but one of its legs was never quite right afterward and it always evinced the greatest dislike of gentlemen in black clothes."
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"...He danced with a young woman with no hair, but who wore a wig of shining beetles that swarmed and seethed on her head. His third partner complained bitterly whenever Stephen's hand happened to brush her gown; she said it put her gown of its singing; and, when Stephen looked down, he saw that her gown was indeed covered with tiny mouths which opened and sang a little tune in a series of high, errie notes."
— Susanna Clarke

"'Ah, but sir,' said Lascelles, 'it is precisely by passing judgments upon other people's work and pointing out their errors that readers can be made to understand your own opinions better. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn a review to one's own ends. One only need mention the book once or twice and for the rest of the article one may develop one's theme just as one chuses. It is, I assure you, what every body else does.'"
— Susanna Clarke

"you must learn to live as I do - in the face of constant criticism, opposition and censure. That, sir, is the English way."
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange Y El Senor Norrel)

""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 could.""
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"It seemed off that anyone could live behind such a high hedge of thorns, and he began to think it would be no great surprize to discover that Mr. Wyvern had been asleep for a hundred years or so. 'Well, I shall not mind that so much,' he thought, 'so long as I am not expected to kiss him.'"
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange Y El Senor Norrel)