Quotes by Diane Setterfield

Diane Setterfield

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.

Birth

Continuation

Stories

All children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.

Children

Heart

Soul

All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes — characters even — caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.

Book

Morning

Reading

Art, its completeness, its formedness, its finishedness, had no power to console. Words on the other hand, were a lifeline. They left their hushed rhythm behind, a counter to the slow in and out of Emmeline’s breathing.

Art

Breathing

Hands

As for you, you are alive. But it’s not the same as living.

Alive

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.

Needs

Silence

Stories

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

Children

House

Secret

Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so.

Book

Light

Reading

Emmeline didn’t call me anything. She didn’t need, for I was always there. You only need names for the absent.

Call Me

Names

Needs

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.

Reading

Two

Writing

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About Yourself

Alive

Art

Bears

Believe

Better Place

Birth

Blood

Body

Book

Breathing

Call Me

Children

Choices

Clients

Color

Continuation

Courses

Culture

Destiny

Doors

Dry

Dull

Eight

Eye

Faces

Facts

Fate

Father

Feelings

Fiction

Firsts

Forever

Forget

Funeral

Grief

Hands

Healthy

Heart

Horror

House

Ice

Ideas

Important

Integrity

Joy

Kindness

Law

Library

Light

The Future Blueprint

Tool

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

Tool

The Autobiography

Tool

The Behaviour Diary

Tool

The Dating Diary

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The Relationship Therapist

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Quotes by Diane Setterfield

Diane Setterfield

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.

All children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.

Art, its completeness, its formedness, its finishedness, had no power to console. Words on the other hand, were a lifeline. They left their hushed rhythm behind, a counter to the slow in and out of Emmeline’s breathing.

As for you, you are alive. But it’s not the same as living.

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.

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

Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so.

Emmeline didn’t call me anything. She didn’t need, for I was always there. You only need names for the absent.

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Topics by Diane Setterfield

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

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