Quotes by Kate Atkinson

Popular versus literary—a false divide?

She could have happily lived inside any nineteenth century novel.

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

What would I put in my bottom drawer? – I would put only sharp objects, the clean lines of broken glass, the honed steel of paring knives, the tiny saw-teeth of bread knives and the soothing edges of razor blades, I weigh knives in my hands like strange comforters.

He had made a vow, a private promise to the world in the long dark watches of the night, that if he did survive then in the great afterward he would always try to be kind, to live a good, quiet life. Like Candide, he would cultivate his garden. quietly. And that would be his redemption. Even if he could add only a feather to the balance it would be some kind of repayment for being spared. When it was all over and the reckoning fell due, it may be that he would be in need of that feather.

The past is a cupboard full of light and all you have to do is find the key that opens the door.

All the birds who were never born, all the songs that were never sung and so can only exist in the imagination.And this one is Teddys.

Small boys were a mystery to Sylvie. The satisfaction they gained from throwing sticks or stones for hours on end, the obsessive collection of inanimate objects, the brutal destruction of the fragile world around them, all seemed at odds with the men they were supposed to become.

Numinous, Ursula said, breaking the silence eventually. Theres a spark of the divine in the world -- not God, erer done with God, but something. Is it love? Not silly romantic love, but something more profound...I think its perhaps something we dont have a name for, Teddy said. We want to name everything. Perhaps thats where weve gone wrong.And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. Having dominion over everything has been a terrible curse.Afterwards -- because it turned out there was an afterwards for Teddy -- he resolved that he would try always to be kind. It was the best he could do. It was all that he could do. And it might be love, after all.

Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness

The past is what you take with you.

He had been very keen on Esperanto, which had seemed an absurd eccentricity at the time but now Ursula thought it might be a good thing to have a universal language, as Latin had once been. Oh, yes, Miss Woolf said, a common language was a wonderful idea, but utterly utopian. All good ideas were, she said sadly.

Oh, man, ‘the nursery,’ ” Dominic said, “what a hell-hole. If I had kids I’d give them the nicest room in the house.”“You do have kids,” his kid said.“Oh, yeah, well, right, you know what I mean.

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

...and no man gave you a fur coat without expecting to receive something inreturn. Except for ones husband, of course, who expected nothing beyond modest gratitude.

If an author was a god, then he was a very poor second-rate one, scrabbling around in the foothills of Olympus.

... Angus had a pretty normal childhood. Bertie had immediately mistrusted him. Nobody had a normal childhood.

In the half-century of his life, a tick on the Doomsday clock, he had borne witness to the most unbelievable technological advances. He had started off listening to an old Bush radio in the corner of the living room and now he had a phone in his hand on which he could pretend to throw a scrunched-up piece of paper into a waste bin. The world had waited a long time for that.

Twittering just seemed to be people telling other people what they were doing--getting in the shower, making coffee. Who on earth wanted to know these things?...Babble and twitter. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

So much for progress. How quickly civilization could dissolve into its more ugly elements.