All books are doors; and some of them are wardrobes.
Interpretation
Books provide opportunities to explore new worlds and ideas.
The quote by Susanna Clarke suggests that books serve as gateways to different realities and experiences, much like the metaphorical doors and wardrobes that lead to other realms in fantasy literature. This highlights the transformative power of reading, where each book can unlock the imagination and take readers on a journey beyond their everyday lives.
In practice
During a book club meeting, this quote can be used to inspire a discussion on the impact of literature.
But when the fairy sang the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairyβs song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself.
It is these black clothes," said Strange. "I am like a leftover piece of funeral, condemned to walk about the Town, frightening people into thinking of their own mortality.
She doesn't do the things heroines are supposed to. Which is rather Jane Austen's point - Fanny is her subversive heroine. She is gentle and self-doubting and utterly feminine; and given the right circumstances, she would defy an army.
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.
I could always imagine more interesting places to be than where I was. And more interesting people than me being there. Eventually, this led to making up stories and writing things down.
If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
I always tell people there's only one trick to writing: You have to write something that people are willing to pay money to read. It doesn't have to be very good, necessarily, but somebody, somewhere, has got to be willing to pay money for it.
Learn the Arabic language; it will sharpen your wisdom.
Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.
I dropped out of school when I was 15 years old. I dropped out because I guess I wasn't getting anything out of my investment in the school.
In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.
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