Diane Setterfield

Every Happy Ever After was tainted. Fate, at first so amenable, so reasonable, so open to negotiation, ends up by exacting a cruel revenge for happiness

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

When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books.

Winter. I looked out of the window for inspiration. Behind my writer’s ghost, dark branches stretched naked across the darkening sky, and the flower beds were bare black soil. The glass was no protection against the chill; despite the gas fire, the room seemed filled with bleak despair. What did winter mean to me? One thing only: death

Tragedy alters everything.

I was born, and the woman in the wedding photo disappeared.

She might have looked like a potato, but there was nothing that girl couldn't do, once she put her mind to it.

His voice had the unmistakable lightness of someone telling something extremely important.

Any governess, after the few hours I have had in this house, would have a full and clearpicture of the task awaiting her, but he is a man, hence cannot see how tiresome it is to have explained at length what one has already fully understood.

Reading can be dangerous.)

When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails?