“It [Ashfair House] was an old fashioned house—the sort of house in fact, as Strange expressed it, which a lady in a novel might like to be persecuted in.”

“Houses, like people, are apt to become rather eccentric if left too much on their own; this house was the architectural equivalent of an old gentleman in a worn dressing-gown and torn slippers, who got up and went to bed at odd times of day, and who kept up a continual conversation with friends no one else could see.”

“With characteristic exuberance Tom named this curiously constructed house Castel des Tours saunz Nowmbre, which means the Castle of Innumerable Towers. David Montefiore had counted the innumerable towers in 1764. There were fourteen of them.”

“It was difficult to image quite where this gentleman [a statue] could have come from: he was a little too cheerful for a saint in a church and not quite comical enough for a coffee-house sign.”

“Mr Norrell determined to establish himself in London with all possible haste. "You must get a house, Childermass," he said. "Get me a house that says to those that visit it that magic is a respectable profession - no less than Law and a great deal more so than Medicine."Childermass inquired drily if Mr Norrell wished him to seek out architecture expressive of the proposition that magic was as respectable as the Church?Mr Norrell (who knew there were such things as jokes in the world or people would not write about them in books, but who had never actually been introduced to a joke or shaken its hand) considered a while before replying at last that no, he did not think they could quite claim that.”

“Mr. Norrell gazed at Strange with an odd expression upon his face as though he would have been glad of a little conversation with him, but had not the least idea how to begin.”

“There was very little about her face and figure that was in any wayremarkable, but it was the sort of face which, when animated byconversation or laughter, is completely transformed. She had a lovelydisposition, a quick mind and a fondness for the comical. She wasalways very ready to smile and, since a smile is the most becomingornament that any lady can wear, she had been known upon occasion tooutshine women who were acknowledged beauties in three countries.”