Kate Atkinson Quotes - Page 2

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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.

Kate Atkinson

Father, School, Class

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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.

Kate Atkinson

Life, Impossible, Ends

Kate Atkinson (2010). “Case Histories: (Jackson Brodie)”, p.201, Random House

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When I'm writing, my neural pathways get blocked. I can't read. I can barely hold a conversation without forgetting words and names. I wish I could wear the same clothes and eat the same food each day.

Kate Atkinson

Writing, Names, Clothes

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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.

Kate Atkinson

Beautiful, Morning, Cutting

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Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.'

Kate Atkinson

Writing, People, Different

"Emotionally weird? Moi?". Interview with Kim Bunce, www.theguardian.com. March 12, 2000.

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

Kate Atkinson

Mother, Doubt, Guilty

Kate Atkinson (2010). “Case Histories: (Jackson Brodie)”, p.37, Random House

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

Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson (2013). “Life After Life”, p.198, Random House

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It was a long time ago now. And it was yesterday.

Kate Atkinson

Yesterday, Long, Long Time

Kate Atkinson (2013). “Life After Life”, p.546, Random House

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

Kate Atkinson

Feminist, Awkward, Feminism

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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.

Kate Atkinson

Baby, Politician, Born

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

Kate Atkinson

Normal, Persons, Happenings

Kate Atkinson (2008). “When will there be good news?”, Transworld Pub

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Everyone said, 'Well, you're very old for a first novel,' and I said, 'How do you write when you haven't lived? How do you write when you have no experience? How do you write straight out of university?

Kate Atkinson

Writing, Firsts, Said

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

Kate Atkinson

Book, Thinking, Giving

"Kate Atkinson tells Hay festival she'd rather not be a published author" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. May 30, 2009.

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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.

Kate Atkinson

Girl, Vocabulary, Emotion

Kate Atkinson (2010). “One Good Turn: (Jackson Brodie)”, p.135, Random House

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Sylvie's knowledge, like Izzie's, was random yet far-ranging, 'The sign that one has acquired one's learning from reading novels rather than an education.

Kate Atkinson

Reading, Reading Novels, Novel

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

Kate Atkinson

Different, Hardest, Hardest Thing

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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.

Kate Atkinson

Mystery, Cases, Knows

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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.

Kate Atkinson

Live Life, Hands, People

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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.

Kate Atkinson

Children, Reading, Reality

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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.

Kate Atkinson

Rocks, Self, Cells

Kate Atkinson (2013). “Emotionally Weird: A Novel”, p.11, Macmillan

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Time was a thief, he stole your life away from you and the only way you could get it back was to outwit him and snatch it right back.

Kate Atkinson

Thieves, Way, Away From You

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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.

Kate Atkinson

Thinking, Catholic, Would Be

"Emotionally weird? Moi?". Interview with Kim Bunce, www.theguardian.com. March 12, 2000.

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Sometimes I would like to cry. I close my eyes. Why weren't we designed so that we can close our ears as well? (Perhaps because we would never open them.) Is there some way that I could accelerate my evolution and develop earlids?

Kate Atkinson

Eye, Ears, Way

Kate Atkinson (2013). “Behind the Scenes at the Museum: A Novel”, p.221, Macmillan

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I was on the verge of something numinous and profound and in one more second the universe was going to crack open and arcana would rain down on my head like grace and all the cosmic mysteries were going to be revealed.

Kate Atkinson

Rain, Profound, Grace

Kate Atkinson (2013). “Emotionally Weird: A Novel”, p.277, Macmillan

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I can't help but think that it's an unfortunate custom to name children after people who come to sticky ends. Even if they are fictional characters, it doesn't bode well for the poor things. There are too many Judes and Tesses and Clarissas and Cordelias around. If we must name our children after literary figures then we should search out happy ones, although it's true they are much harder to find.

Kate Atkinson

Children, Character, Thinking

Kate Atkinson (2013). “Emotionally Weird: A Novel”, p.102, Macmillan

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Born: 1951
Occupation: Writer
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