Susanna Clarke
Susanna Clarke
Susanna Mary Clarkeis an English author best known for her debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, a Hugo Award-winning alternative history. Clarke began Jonathan Strange in 1993 and worked on it during her spare time. For the next decade, she published short stories from the Strange universe, but it was not until 2003 that Bloomsbury bought her manuscript and began work on its publication. The novel became a best-seller...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth1 November 1959
except full liked people rooms
I always really liked magicians. I'm not even sure why - except that they know things other people don't, and they live in untidy rooms full of strange objects.
led people stories
I could always imagine more interesting places to be than where I was. And more interesting people than me being there. Eventually, this led to making up stories and writing things down.
lonely play people
Perhaps I am too tame, too domestic a magician. But how does one work up a little madness? I meet with mad people every day in the street, but I never thought before to wonder how they got mad. Perhaps I should go wandering on lonely moors and barren shores. That is always a popular place for lunatics - in novels and plays at any rate. Perhaps wild England will make me mad.
people house gentleman
Houses, like people, are apt to become rather eccentric if left too much on their own; this house was the architectural equivalent of an old gentleman in a worn dressing-gown and torn slippers, who got up and went to bed at odd times of day, and who kept up a continual conversation with friends no one else could see.
people brain noise
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...
people doe complaining
Well, I suppose one ought not to employ a magician and then complain that he does not behave like other people.
thinking clothes people
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.
dream country people
I was told once by some country people that a magician should never tell his dreams because the telling will make them come true. But I say that is great nonsense.
morning tuesday people
It has been remarked (by a lady infinitely cleverer than the present author) how kindly disposed the world in general feels to young people who either die or marry. Imagine then the interest that surrounded Miss Wintertowne! No young lady ever had such advantages before: for she died upon the Tuesday, was raised to life in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and was married upon the Thursday; which some people thought too much excitement for one week.
convincing magicians
In 'Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell,' I wanted to create the most convincing story of magic and magicians that I could.
I had to restrain myself from buying a book on 19th-century fruit knives.
confess fanny rather spite teens
I must confess that in my teens and twenties, I loved 'Mansfield Park' rather in spite of Fanny than because of her. Like Fanny's rich, sophisticated cousins, I didn't really get her.
characters glamorous quite seemed
It seemed to me that you make magic real by making it a little prosaic, a little difficult and disappointing - never quite as glamorous as the other characters imagine.
alan born british moore printer worker
Alan Moore is a peculiarly unsung triumph of British culture, and Northampton, where he was born in 1953, the son of brewery worker Ernest and printer Sylvia, is where you must go to find him.