Kate Atkinson Quotes

Alternate history fascinates me, as it fascinates all novelists, because 'What if?' is the big thing.

I've always loved mysteries, the something there that you didn't know, and with 'Case Histories' I just decide to make that more up-front.

Oh, God. What was happening to her, she was turning into a normal person.

She was a terrible mother, there was no doubt about it, but she didn't even have the strength to feel guilty.

Feminism is such an incredibly awkward word for us these days, isnt it? Not to be feminist would be bizarre, wouldnt it?

I am mad, I think. I am mad therefore I think. I am mad therefore I think I am.

She should have done science, not spent all her time with her head in novels. Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.

Ethics are not necessarily to do with being law-abiding. I am very interested in the moral path, doing the right thing.

The past is what you take with you.

Probably not needing to be published would give me more time to think about a book.

The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories.

Life wasn't about becoming, was it? It was about being.

Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness, a conundrum that she couldn’t even begin to solve.

Not being published would be great. When I say that to other writers they look at me as if I'm totally insane.

I think about death a lot, I really do, because I can't believe I won't exist. It's the ego isn't it? I feel that I should retreat into a better form of Zen Buddhism than this kind of ego-dominated thing. But I don't know, I mean, I want to come back as a tree but I suspect that it's just not going to happen, is it?

Certainly I had a really terrible time with 'Emotionally Weird.' When I finished it, I thought, 'I can't write any more.

Most people muddled through events and only in retrospect realized their significance.

In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.

I'm a lapsed Quaker. I don't go to meetings any more. But I'm very drawn to Catholicism - all that glitter. I'd love to be a Catholic. I think it would be fantastic - faith, forgiveness, absolution, extreme unction - all these wonderful words. I don't think anyone who was ever born a Catholic hasn't died a Catholic, no matter how lapsed they are.

The Grim Reaper, Gloria corrected herself - if anyone deserved capital letters it was surely Death. Gloria would rather like to be the Grim Reaper. She wouldn't necessarily be grim, she suspected she would be quite cheerful (Come along now, don't make such a fuss).

I find the past so fascinating. Photographs are strange, almost surreal, almost here yet gone. I slip into thinking what the past must have been like and I enjoy creating that ambience and atmosphere - 1730 to around 1870 is the most interesting period.

Fairy tales opened up a door into my imagination - they don't conform to the reality that's around you as a child. I started reading when I was three and read everything, but I wanted to be an actress.

You must never believe everything they say about a person. Generally speaking, most of it will be lies, half-truths at best.

Patricia embraces me on the station platform. 'The past is what you leave behind in life, Ruby,' she says with the smile of a reincarnated lama. 'Nonsense, Patricia,' I tell her as I climb on board my train. 'The past's what you take with you.

They said love made you strong, but in Louise's opinion it made you weak. It corkscrewed into your heart and you couldn't get it out again, not without ripping your heart to pieces.

He was born a politician. No, Ursula thought, he was born a baby, like everyone else. And this is what he has chosen to become.

Jennifer had never liked the pain of remembering what had happened, but for Theo it was the pain that kept Laura alive in his memory. He was afraid that if it ever began to heal she would disappear.

What if we had a chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right? Wouldn't that be wonderful?

Some people spend their whole lives looking for themselves, yet our self is the one thing we surely cannot lose (how like a cheap philosopher I am become, staying in this benighted place). From the moment we are conceived it is the pattern in our blood and our bones are printed through with it like sticks of seaside rock. Nora, on the other hand, says that she’s surprised anyone knows who they are, considering that every cell and molecule in our bodies has been replaced many times over since we were born.

No point in thinking, you just have to get on with life. We only have one after all, we should try and do our best. We can never get it right, but we must try.

Julia's vocabulary was "chock-full" of strangely archaic words - "spiffing," "crumbs," "jeepers" - that seemed to have originated in some prewar girls' annual rather than in Julia's own life. For Jackson, words were functional, they helped you get to places and explain things. For Julia, they were freighted with inexplicable emotion.

Men had no purpose on earth whereas women were gods walking unrecognized among them.

I don't have goals when writing books, apart from getting to the end. I have rather vague ideas about how I want things to feel, I'm big on ambience. I have a title, a beginning and a probable ending and go from there.

Love was the hardest thing. Don't let anyone ever tell you different.

Perhaps we are on an insula ex machina, an artificial place not in the real world at all -- a backdrop for the stories we must tell.

Why is everything an 'adventure' with you?" Sylvie said irritably to Izzie." "Because life is an adventure, of course." "I would say it was more of an endurance race," Sylvie said. "Or an obstacle course.

I spent four years doing a doctorate in postmodern American literature. I can recognize it when I see it.

She doesn't believe in dogs," Bridget said. "Dogs are hardly an article of faith," Sylvie said.

I feel as if I’m waiting for something dreadful to happen, and then I realize it already has.

You can step in the same river but the water will always be new.

If they would all sleep all the time she wouldn't mind being their mother.

As I watch, the sky fills with clouds of snow feathers from every kind of bird there ever was and even some that only exist in the imagination, like the bluebirds that fly over the rainbow.

Hindsight's a wonderful thing. If we all had it there would be no history to write about.

My father was an autodidact. It wasn't a middle-class house. Shopkeepers are aspirant. He paid for me to go to private school. He was denied an education - he had a horrible childhood. He got a place at a grammar school and wasn't allowed to go.

Become such as you are, having learned what that is.

It wasn't that [he] believed in religion, or a God, or an afterlife. He just knew it was impossible to feel this much love and for it to end.

What did you do when the worst thing that could happen to you had already happened - how did you live life then? You had to hand it to Theo Wyre, just carrying on living required a strength and courage that most people didn't have.

When you chopped logs with the ax and they split open they smelled beautiful, like Christmas. But when you split someone's head open it smelled like abattoir and quite overpowered the scent of the wild lilacs you'd cut and brought into the house only this morning, which was already another life.