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

47 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

35 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

27 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

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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.)

Diane Setterfield

Baby, Wall, Reading

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

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Of course I loved books more than people.

Diane Setterfield

Book, People, Courses

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

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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

9 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

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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

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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

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In this cruel world kindness should always be repaid.

Diane Setterfield

Kindness, World, Should

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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

8 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

9 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

9 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

6 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

7 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

9 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

19 Copy quote
There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner.

Diane Setterfield

Hands, Experts, Prisoner

"The Thirteenth Tale". Book by Diane Setterfield, 2006.

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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.

Diane Setterfield

Morning, Book, Eight

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

6 Copy quote
But there can be no secrets in a house where there are children.

Diane Setterfield

Children, House, Secret

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale”, p.72, Simon and Schuster

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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

9 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

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There are cultures in which it is believed that a name contains all a persons mystical power. That a name should be known only to God and to the person who holds it and to very few privileged others. To pronounce such a name either ones own or someone else's is to invite jeopardy. This it seemed was such a name.

Diane Setterfield

Names, Culture, Should

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.52, Simon and Schuster

5 Copy quote
People whose lives are not balanced by a healthy love of money suffer from an appalling obsession with personal integrity.

Diane Setterfield

Integrity, People, Healthy

Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.44, Simon and Schuster

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Born: August 22, 1964
Occupation: Author
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