Diane Setterfield
Diane Setterfield
Diane Setterfieldis a British author whose 2006 debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale, became a New York Times No. 1 best-seller. It is written in the Gothic tradition, with echoes of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Her debut novel was turned into a television film...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth22 August 1964
children house secret
But there can be no secrets in a house where there are children.
book hunger appetite
Though my appetite for food grew frail, my hunger for books was constant.
long funeral forever
The funeral was over, at last I could cry. Except that I couldn't. My tears, kept in too long, had fossilized. They would have to stay in forever now.
book people stranger
Of course I loved books more than people. Of course I valued "Jane Eyre" over the anonymous stranger...Of course all of Shakespeare was worth more than a human life.
book heart body
There are times when the human face and body can express the yearning of the heart so accurately that you can, as they say, read them like a book. Do not abandon me.
book believe important
I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Books are for me, it must be said, the most important thing.
revenge fate firsts
Fate, at first so amenable, so reasonable, so open to negotiation, ends up by exacting a cruel revenge for happiness.
reading writing two
Every so often I take out a volume and read a page or two. After all, reading is looking after in a manner of speaking. Though they're not old enough to be valuable for their age alone, nor important enough to be sought after by collectors, my charges are dear to me, even if, as often as not, they are as dull on the inside as on the outside. No matter how banal the contents, there is always something that touches me. For someone now dead once thought these words significant enough to write them down.
book smell taste
opening the book, i inhaled. the smell of old books, so sharp, so dry you can taste it.
baby wall reading
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.)
people bears fiction
I know there are people who don't read fiction at all, and I find it hard to understand how they can bear to be inside the same head all the time.
people dull facts
I've nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions.
dark wind bears
What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney?
running wall lying
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.