• I have a scholar's love of silence and solitude. To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment.

    Susanna Clarke: I have a scholar's love of silence and solitude. To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment.
    Susanna Clarke (2009). “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell”, p.66, Bloomsbury Publishing