Diane Setterfield Quotes

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Birth Books Children Feelings Magic Reading Soul

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.

Diane Setterfield

Moving, Writing, Blood

Diane Setterfield (2006). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.8, Simon and Schuster

42 Copy quote
My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don't expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.

Diane Setterfield

Running, Wall, Lying

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

4 Copy quote
But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grown pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.

Diane Setterfield

Silence, Needs, Stories

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.300, Simon and Schuster

7 Copy quote
A birth is not really a beginning. Our lives at the start are not really our own but only the continuation of someone else's story.

Diane Setterfield

Stories, Birth, Continuation

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.58, Simon and Schuster

0 Copy quote
I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy

Diane Setterfield

Reading, Joy, Stage

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale”, p.39, Simon and Schuster

30 Copy quote
A story so cherished it has to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.

Diane Setterfield

Stories, Cases, Significance

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale”, p.269, Simon and Schuster

4 Copy quote
A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.

Diane Setterfield

Broken, Stories, Pieces

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

8 Copy quote
I don't pretend reality is the same for everyone.

Diane Setterfield

Reality

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

22 Copy quote
There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere.

Diane Setterfield

Book, World, Lines

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.29, Simon and Schuster

4 Copy quote
When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic, yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.

Diane Setterfield

Children, Book, Nostalgic

Diane Setterfield (2006). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

4 Copy quote
For me to see is to read. It has always been that way.

Diane Setterfield

Way

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

11 Copy quote
Of course I loved books more than people.

Diane Setterfield

Book, People, Courses

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale”, p.295, Simon and Schuster

10 Copy quote
What better place to kill time than a library?

Diane Setterfield

Library, Better Place

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.41, Simon and Schuster

2 Copy quote
Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic. As one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head.

Diane Setterfield

Book, Ice, Law

Diane Setterfield (2011). “The Thirteenth Tale”, p.24, Hachette UK

2 Copy quote
Once upon a time there was a fairy godmother, but the rest of the time there was none. This story is about one of those other times.

Diane Setterfield

Once Upon A Time, Godmother, Stories

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale”, p.492, Simon and Schuster

14 Copy quote
People with ambition don't give a damn what other people think of them.

Diane Setterfield

Ambition, Thinking, People

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.45, Simon and Schuster

3 Copy quote
Tragedy alters everything.

Diane Setterfield

Tragedy

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.35, Simon and Schuster

0 Copy quote
I am human. Like all humans, I do not remember my birth. By the time we wake up to ourselves, we are little children, and our advent is something that happened an eternity ago, at the beginning of time. We live like latecomers to the theater; we must catch up as best we can, divining the begging from the shape of later events. - Vida Winter

Diane Setterfield

Children, Winter, Events

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.357, Simon and Schuster

4 Copy quote
All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes -- characters even -- caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.

Diane Setterfield

Morning, Book, Reading

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.289, Simon and Schuster

0 Copy quote
What better way to get to know someone than through her choice and treatment of books?

Diane Setterfield

Book, Choices, Way

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.41, Simon and Schuster

0 Copy quote
My mother and I were like two continents moving slowly but inexorably apart; my father, the bridge builder, constantly extending the fragile edifice he had constructed to connect us.

Diane Setterfield

Mother, Father, Moving

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale”, p.236, Simon and Schuster

1 Copy quote
When one is nothing, one invents. It fills a void.

Diane Setterfield

Void

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.115, Simon and Schuster

2 Copy quote
Everybody has a story. It's like families. You might not know who they are, might have lost them, but they exist all the same. You might drift apart or you might turn your back on them, but you can't say you haven't got them. Same goes for stories.

Diane Setterfield

Stories, Might, Like Family

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.300, Simon and Schuster

0 Copy quote
As for you, you are alive. But it's not the same as living.

Diane Setterfield

Alive

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.183, Simon and Schuster

3 Copy quote
Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so.

Diane Setterfield

Book, Reading, Light

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

2 Copy quote

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Born: August 22, 1964
Occupation: Author
Cite this Page: Citation

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