Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

by Susanna Clarke

Houses, like people, are apt to become rather eccentric if left too much on their own;

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.

“I suppose it is because I have been many things since last we met. I have been trees and rivers and hills and stones. I have spoken to stars and earth and wind. One cannot be the conduit through which all English magic flows and still be oneself.