Bellman & Black Quotes

“Without the past to cast its long shadow, might you see the future more clearly?”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“People remembered. They wept and they grieved. In the spaces between, they were glad that the leeks were doing well this year, envied the bonnet of the neighbor's cousin, relished the fragrance of pork roasting in the kitchen on Sunday. There were those that registered the beauty of a pale moon suspended behind the branches of the elms on the ridge.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“...on those days when he could not spend half an hour in the company of a good book, he felt deprived.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“He felt something move in his chest, as though an organ had been removed and something unfamiliar left in its place. A sentiment he had never suspected the existence of bloomed in him. It traveled from his chest along his veins to every limb. It swelled in his head, muffled his ears, stilled his voice, and collected in his feet and fingers. Having no language for it, he remained silent, but felt it root, become permanent.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“Seventeen years being neither a very short nor a very long time, Phillip was remembered and misremembered in equal measure.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“Never let time be your master,' Bellman told Verney when he asked about it. 'If you want to do something, take it on. Time will always make itself.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“Rose waited for the night to bring her the same comfort. It didn't. Her mother was dead...she was now too exhausted to sleep -- and too heartbroken to weep.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“The rook is a skilled survivor. He is ancient and has inhabited the planet longer than humans. This you can tell from his singing voice: his cry is harsh and grating, made for a more ancient world that existed before the innovation of the pipe, the lute, and the viol. Before music was invented he was taught to sing by the planet itself. He mimicked the great rumble of the sea, the fearsome eruption of volcanoes, the creaking of glaciers, and the geological groaning as the world split apart in its agony and remade itself.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“A hundred hands wanted shaking, a hundred tongues expressed their condolences. Thank you, said William, and Kind of you, endlessly.

Between his uncle and the helpfulness of the Misses Young and all these other people, William was never alone, not for an hour, except to sleep. He went to bed with the distant, certain expectation that overnight the world would put itself right. He slept for long hours: endless, dreamless sleep, which did not refresh, and when he woke the world bewildered him by persisting in its wayward course. He felt weighted down and dreary. A fog settled between him and his own thoughts, and behind it, unformulated, unexamined, was this: How long before things go back to normal?

His mother was dead: he had seen the body; yet this knowledge refused to find a settled place in his mind. It came and went, surprised him every time he chanced upon it, and there were a million reasons not to believe it. His mother was dead, but look: here were her clothes and here her tea cups, here her Sunday hat on the shelf over the coat hook. His mother was dead, but hark: the garden gate! Any moment now she would come through the door.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“They stood in silence, looking at floorboards and corners of cornices and other such insignificances, their curiosity and compassion at the ready. They were waiting so hard that when the door cracked and Bellman appeared, they jumped.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“Why do they spend their time with cows when they are surely the more natural companions to unicorns, griffins and dragons? The answer is that the rook lives as he wishes. When he wants the entertainment of human company he is more likely to seek out the drunken poet or the wild-eyed crone than a damsel with a cornet.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“One of the first keys to success, he considered, was to recognize the difference between problems you could do something about and problems you could do nothing about.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“At first the boys were puzzled by illness. They looked at their father from the other side of a wall of pain, bewildered that their father stood writing in his book, when he had only to reach over the division and lift them clear of it.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“Once you said a thing, it could never be taken back and would be taken up and repeated and altered and told again, no matter how misshapen and out of true. Better to say nothing.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“The past had no hold on him. Perhaps that’s why his vision of the future was so strong. Without the past to cast its long shadow, might you see the future more clearly? You”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“Rigid, glaring, set in a frown, his face was so much what it had been in life that the maid spoke to him three times before she realized he was dead.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“Then something rang a bell in his mind. What”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“Nikad nemoj dozvoliti da ti vrijeme bude gospodar', rekao je Bellman. 'Ako nešto želiš učiniti, učini to. Vrijeme će se stvoriti samo od sebe.'
No zapravo, smatrao je da je otkrio - ili mu je darovan - ključ znanosti o upravljanju vremenom. Mogao je otključati vrijeme poput kovčega kad god mu se prohtjelo, staviti uteg na klatno i usporiti njegovo kretanje. Mogao je rastaviti sate na dijelove, pronaći u njima dodatne minute koje su odlazile u vjetar i iskoristiti ih.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“the wealth they had accumulated from retail needed to hide its origins, for it is well known that the purity of gold increases the further removed it is from labor.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“Someone had told him once that the desire to do something well is a good indicator of talent.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black

“Since we are on the topic of ravens, a collective noun for ravens is an unkindness. This is somewhat puzzling to Thought and Memory.”
― Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black