Strange Norrell Quotes & Sayings

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

The sky spoke to me," said Childermass. "If what I saw was true, then ... " He paused.
"Then what?" asked Mr Norrell.
In his weakened state Childermass had been thinking aloud. He had meant to say that if what he had seen was true, then everything that Strange and Norrell had ever done was child's-play and magic was a much stranger and more terrifying thing than any of them had thought of. Strange and Norrell had been merely throwing paper darts about a parlour, while real magic soared and swooped and twisted on great wings in a limitless sky far, far above them. — Susanna Clarke

Mr. Norrell gazed at Strange with an odd expression upon his face as though he would have been glad of a little conversation with him, but had not the least idea how to begin. — Susanna Clarke

I am, as far as I can tell, about a month behind Lord Byron. In every town we stop at we discover innkeepers, postillions, officials, burghers, potboys, and all kinds and sorts of ladies whose brains still seem somewhat deranged from their brief exposure to his lordship. And though my companions are careful to tell people that I am that dreadful being, an English magician, I am clearly nothing in comparison to an English poet and everywhere I go I enjoy the reputation- quite new to me, I assure you- of the quiet, good Englishman, who makes no noise and is no trouble to any one ... — Susanna Clarke

One cannot write about Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell without considering the footnotes. The experienced reader is conditioned to see footnotes as dry, as a way of grounding the text in reality. But footnotes are also an intervention, or intrusion into the flow of the text, and Clarke takes advantage of this figuring. In Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, it is in the footnotes that the world of the fantastic slips through to disrupt the meaning or common understanding of the tale told in the main text. The "explanation" they offer is of worlds slipping between each other, of uncontrolled contact with fairy. — Farah Mendlesohn

In 'Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell,' I wanted to create the most convincing story of magic and magicians that I could. — Susanna Clarke

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

Poor gentleman," said Mr Segundus. "Perhaps it is the age. It is not an age for magic or scholarship, is it sir? Tradesmen prosper, sailors, politicians, but not magicians. Our time is past. — Susanna Clarke

Mr Norrell assured Mr Strange that he would find war very disagreeable. One is often wet and cold upon a battlefield. You will like it a great deal less than you suppose. — Susanna Clarke

'Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell' by Susanna Clarke is a big, thick book. About a thousand pages in paperback. I've heard several people say the size alone intimidated them. — Ann Leckie

I read Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I think will subsequently be recognized as one of the first great novels of the 21st century. — Lev Grossman

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. — Susanna Clarke

When he awoke it was dawn. Or something like dawn. The light was watery, dim and incomparably sad. Vast, grey, gloomy hills rose up all around them and in between the hills there was a wide expanse of black bog.
Stephen had never seen a landscape so calculated to reduce the onlooker to utter despair in an instant. "This is one of your kingdoms, I suppose, sir?" he said. "My kingdoms?" exclaimed the gentleman in surprize. "Oh, no! This is Scotland! — Susanna Clarke

For the next hour and a half he tried all the magic he could think of. He cast spells of remembering, spells of finding, spells of awakening, spells to concentrate the mind, spells to dispel nightmares and evil thoughts, spells to find patterns in chaos, spells to find a path when one was lost, spells of demystification, spells of discernment, spells to increase intelligence, spells to cure sickness and spells to repair a limb that is shattered. Some of the spells were long and complicated. Some were a single word. Some had to be said out loud. Some had only to be thought. Some had no words at all but consisted of a single gesture. Some were spells that Strange and Norrell had employed in some form or other every day for the last five years. Some had probably not been used for centuries. Some used a mirror; two used a tiny bead of blood from the magician's finger; and one used a candle and a piece of ribbon. But they all had this in common: they had no effect upon the King whatsoever. — Susanna Clarke