Quotes from book
The Thirteenth Tale

The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is a gothic suspense novel, the author's first published book.

“Sometimes when you open the door to the past, what you confront is your destiny.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“opening the book, i inhaled. the smell of old books, so sharp, so dry you can taste it.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“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.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“To anyone who took the trouble to look, I was plainly visible, but when people are expecting to see nothing, that is usually what they see.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“Of course I loved books more than people.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“One needs no particular talent to be polite. On the contrary, being nice is what's left when you've failed at everything else.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“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.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delinaments, weight and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all.
I know, he said, because he was human, and therefore, in a way, he did.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“I don't pretend reality is the same for everyone.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“She was a do-gooder, which means that all the ill she did, she did without realizing it.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney?”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic, yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“Everybody has a story. It's like families. You might not know who they are, might have lost them, but they exist all the same. You might drift apart or you might turn your back on them, but you can't say you haven't got them. Same goes for stories.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“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.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“What better way to get to know someone than through her choice and treatment of books?”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“I've nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale