“Time and I have quarrelled. All hours are midnight now. I had a clock and a watch, but I destroyed them both. I could not bear the way they mocked me.”

“I have a scholar's love of silence and solitude. To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment.”

“I have been most industriously talking up your extraordinary powers to all my wide acquaintance,' continued Mr Drawlight. 'I have been your John the Baptist, sir, preparing the way for you!”

“And now, Your Majesty," said Strange, "I think it is time we returned to the Castle. You and I, Your Majesty, are a British King and a British magician. Though Great Britain may desert us, we have no right to desert Great Britain. She may have need of us yet.”

“I have no cause to love Mr. Norrell- far from it. But I know this about him: he is a magician first and everything else second- and Jonathan is the same. Books and magic are all either of them really care about.”

“I reached out my hand, England's rivers turned and flowed the other way...I reached out my hand, my enemies's blood stopt in their veins...I reached out my hand; thought and memory flew out of my enemies' heads like a flock of starlings;My enemies crumpled like empty sacks.I came to them out of mists and rain;I came to them in dreams at midnight;I came to them in a flock of ravens that filled a northern sky at dawn;When they thought themselves safe I came to them in a cry that broke the silence of a winter wood...The rain made a door for me and I went through it;The stones made a throne for me and I sat upon it;Three kingdoms were given to me to be mine forever;England was given to me to be mine forever.The nameless slave wore a silver crown;The nameless slave was a king in a strange country...The weapons that my enemies raised against me are venerated in Hell as holy relics;Plans that my enemies made against me are preserved as holy texts;Blood that I shed upon ancient battlefields is scraped from the stained earth by Hell's sacristans and placed in a vessel of silver and ivory.I gave magic to England, a valuable inheritanceBut Englishmen have despised my giftMagic shall be written upon the sky by the rain but they shall not be able to read it;Magic shall be written on the faces of the stony hills but their minds shall not be able to contain it;In winter the barren trees shall be a black writing but they shall not understand it...Two magicians shall appear in England...The first shall fear me; the second shall long to behold me;The first shall be governed by thieves and murderers; the second shall conspire at his own destruction;The first shall bury his heart in a dark wood beneath the snow, yet still feel its ache;The second shall see his dearest posession in his enemy's hand...The first shall pass his life alone, he shall be his own gaoler;The second shall tread lonely roads, the storm above his head, seeking a dark tower upon a high hillside...I sit upon a black throne in the shadows but they shall not see me.The rain shall make a door for me and I shall pass through it;The stones shall make a throne for me and I shall sit upon it...The nameless slave shall wear a silver crownThe nameless slave shall be a king in a strange country...”

“And all the nursemaids and kitchen maids I ever knew when I was a child, always had a aunt, who knew a woman, whose first cousin's boy had been put into just such a box, and had never been seen again.”