Diane Setterfield
Diane Setterfield
Diane Setterfieldis a British author whose 2006 debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale, became a New York Times No. 1 best-seller. It is written in the Gothic tradition, with echoes of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Her debut novel was turned into a television film...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth22 August 1964
single-mom writing ideas
There was no single moment when I thought, Aha! What a great idea! Rather there was a slow and gradual accumulation of numerous small ideas.
past long shadow
Without the past to cast its long shadow, might you see the future more clearly?
book feelings might
She could not read a book for fear of the feelings she might find in it.
thinking coarse
I shall start at the beginning. Though of coarse, the beginning is never where you think it is.
children house secret
But there can be no secrets in a house where there are children.
book hunger appetite
Though my appetite for food grew frail, my hunger for books was constant.
book people stranger
Of course I loved books more than people. Of course I valued "Jane Eyre" over the anonymous stranger...Of course all of Shakespeare was worth more than a human life.
long funeral forever
The funeral was over, at last I could cry. Except that I couldn't. My tears, kept in too long, had fossilized. They would have to stay in forever now.
morning book blue
The hours between eight in the evening and one or two in the morning have always been my magic hours. Against the blue candlewick bedspread the white pages of my open book, illuminated by a circle of lamplight, were the gateway to another world.
art book hard-times
And sometimes then he sat with us for an hour or so, sharing our limbo, listening while I read. Books from any shelf, opened at any page, in which I would start and finish anywhere, mid-sentence sometimes. Wuthering Heights ran into Emma, which gave way to The Eustace Diamonds, which faded into Hard Times, which ceded to The Woman in White. Fragments. It didn't matter. Art, its completeness, its formedness, its finishedness, had no power to console. Words, on the other hand, were a lifeline.
people dull facts
I've nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions.
book smell taste
opening the book, i inhaled. the smell of old books, so sharp, so dry you can taste it.
baby wall reading
Still in my coat and hat, I sank onto the stair to read the letter. (I never read without making sure I am in a secure position. I have been like this ever since the age of seven when, sitting on a high wall and reading The Water Babies, I was so seduced by the descriptions of underwater life that I unconsciously relaxed my muscles. Instead of being held buoyant by the water that so vividly surrounded me in my mind, I plummeted to the ground and knocked myself out. I can still feel the scar under my fringe now. Reading can be dangerous.)
reading writing two
Every so often I take out a volume and read a page or two. After all, reading is looking after in a manner of speaking. Though they're not old enough to be valuable for their age alone, nor important enough to be sought after by collectors, my charges are dear to me, even if, as often as not, they are as dull on the inside as on the outside. No matter how banal the contents, there is always something that touches me. For someone now dead once thought these words significant enough to write them down.