Susan Hill
Susan Hill
Susan Hill CBEis an English author of fiction and non-fiction works. Her novels include The Woman in Black, The Mist in the Mirror and I'm the King of the Castle for which she received the Somerset Maugham Award in 1971. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empirein the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to literature...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth5 February 1942
real doors doubt
Whatever was about, whoever I had seen, and heard rocking, and who had passed me by just now, whoever had opened the locked door was not 'real'. No. But what was 'real'? At that moment I began to doubt my own reality.
heart sky space
My head reeled at the sheer and startling beauty, the wide, bare openness of it. The sense of space, the vastness of the sky above and on either side made my heart race, I would have travelled a thousand miles to see this. I had never imagined such a place.
time spring autumn
Gardeners celebrate the influence of time. If we have had a late cold spring followed by a desiccating drought, autumn may be the most soft and golden for years; one poor season will sooner or later be compensated for by another.
writing thinking ghost-stories
I read a lot of ghost stories because I was writing a ghost story. I didn't think at all I was writing a horror or a thriller or whatever because it is about a ghost, whereas a horror film can be about aliens or things that rise out of the marsh that have no human shape.
morning light small-changes
This gardener will be out in the very early morning and from late afternoon, attentive to small changes in the quality of light and the atmosphere, as well as to every nuance of the season, which combine to create perfection.
garden perfection design
The more contemplative gardener, seeing the garden as a whole, the design of it, and its nature as a still place of delight and refreshment, will wait and hope for the moment when it seems to achieve perfection. Awareness of when such moments are most likely helps to make them happen; they will not be entirely accidental but anticipated; everything will be planned to encourage them.
spring destiny events
I had not yet learned that we make our own destiny, it springs from within us. It is not the outward events but what we allow ourselves to make of them that count.
dark giving littles
I collect Victorian automata and coming across them in the dark does give you a little shudder.
running moving people
Some people make tunes, but it is lines that run like moving messages through my head. Whatever else I am saying and doing often has no bearing on this inner, verbal life.
book inanimate-objects new-life
A book which is left on a shelf is a dead thing but it is also a chrysalis, an inanimate object packed with the potential to burst into new life.
book simple hands
I love the book. I love the feel of a book in my hands, the compactness of it, the shape, the size. I love the feel of paper. The sound it makes when I turn a page. I love the beauty of print on paper, the patterns, the shapes, the fonts. I am astonished by the versatility and practicality of The Book. It is so simple. It is so fit for its purpose. It may give me mere content, but no e-reader will ever give me that sort of added pleasure.
scare creeps mining
I'm really quite hard to scare so it was about mining times when I have jumped, and what creeps me out.
children believe optimistic
Of all human activities, apart from the procreation of children, gardening is the most optimistic and hopeful. The gardener is by definition one who plans for and believes and trusts in a future, whether in the short or the longer term.
life garden order
There is a continuity about the garden and an order of succession in the garden year which is deeply pleasing, and in one sense there are no breaks or divisions - seed time flows on to flowering time and harvest time; no sooner is one thing dying than another is coming to life.