Diane Setterfield

Tragedy alters everything.

— Diane Setterfield

“the Missus stood like a ghost.”

— Diane Setterfield

“We were both lone twins.”

— Diane Setterfield

“do you believe in ghosts?”

— Diane Setterfield

“William Henry Cadwalladr”

— Diane Setterfield

“We’ve been expecting you.”

— Diane Setterfield

“Life is compost.”

— Diane Setterfield

“It was Hester herself, made word.”

— Diane Setterfield

“No one can hold you to a decision made in the middle of the night.”

— Diane Setterfield

“the house picked up again its long, slow project of decay.”

— Diane Setterfield

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

— Diane Setterfield

“Jane Eyre. Villette. The Woman in White.” “Middlemarch,”

— Diane Setterfield

In this cruel world kindness should always be repaid.

— Diane Setterfield

“flat brown bangs, my straight skirt and navy cardigan.”

— Diane Setterfield

“It was like living entirely inside a book.”

— Diane Setterfield

What better place to kill time than a library?

— Diane Setterfield

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

— Diane Setterfield

“I wondered. What did she think of our attempts to persuader ourselves that this was life and that we were really living…

— Diane Setterfield

“Miss Lea, it doesn't do to get attached to these secondary characters. It's not their story.”

— Diane Setterfield

“... [They] took it upon themselves to start the laborious process of cranking up life again, after death has stopped us all…

— Diane Setterfield

“But there was more. Did she know I had noticed? I had made no outward sign. But I had noticed. Today Miss…

— Diane Setterfield

What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney?

— Diane Setterfield

“And is it better to know?” he asked me. “I can’t tell you. But once you know, it’s impossible to go back.”

— Diane Setterfield

“For someone now dead once thought these words significant enough to write them down.”

— Diane Setterfield

“Oh, my poor child.” I felt the touch of Miss Winter’s hand on my shoulder, and while I cried over the corpses…

— Diane Setterfield

“Emmeline and Adeline. Unmistakable. Two manes of red hair, two pairs of black shoes; one child in the navy poplin that the…

— Diane Setterfield

“The storyteller gave me a sideways look. "Miss Lea, it doesn't do to get attached to these secondary characters. It's not their…

— Diane Setterfield

“Of course I recognized it. How could I not, for I had read it goodness knows how many times. 'Jane Eyre,' I…

— Diane Setterfield

My mother says that after I first visited the home of the man I later married, she knew it was serious when…

— Diane Setterfield

All children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to…

— Diane Setterfield

“could just see the movements of Miss Winter’s lashes. They crouched and quivered around the eye, like the long legs of a…

— Diane Setterfield

“The beginning, perhaps. The girl without the mother. But after that . . . I wish someone could tell me what it means. I wish…

— Diane Setterfield

“He felt something move in his chest, as though an organ had been removed and something unfamiliar left in its place. A…

— Diane Setterfield

“The night I was found there was a big fire here. Mrs. Love told me so, when I was nine. She thought…

— Diane Setterfield

“The steps were flanked by a pair of low pedestals, on which were mounted two giant cats carved out of some dark,…

— Diane Setterfield

“It was better to tell such stories close to the river than in a drawing room. Words accumulate indoors, trapped by walls…

— Diane Setterfield

“His confidences, this mist, had led us unexpectedly onto a peninsula of intimacy, and I found myself on the brink of telling…

— Diane Setterfield

“then into a space where there seemed to be nothing but mist. When we came to a wall of yew twice as…

— Diane Setterfield

Still in my coat and hat, I sank onto the stair to read the letter. (I never read without making sure I…

— Diane Setterfield

And sometimes then he sat with us for an hour or so, sharing our limbo, listening while I read. Books from any…

— Diane Setterfield