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1b54320
|
Moira and the girls and they soon resumed their furtive
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Kate Atkinson |
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2b72047
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suspected everyone did--from Winnie, the least pulchritudinous,
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Kate Atkinson |
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fe0d23f
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He noticed that Ursula's ox-eye daisies, wrapped in damp newspaper, were drooping, almost dead. Nothing could be kept, he thought, everything ran through one's fingers like sand or water. Or time. Perhaps nothing should be kept.
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Kate Atkinson |
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ca1dd39
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Not
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Kate Atkinson |
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2edbd36
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Mum had worshipped Princess Di and frequently lamented her passing. "Gone," she would say, shaking her head in disbelief. "Just like that. All that exercise for nothing."
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Kate Atkinson |
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8c830f8
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the grain had entered the shell (Sylvie's own metaphoric stance) and the pearl that would be Edward Beresford Todd began to grow until he was revealed into the sunshine that came before the Great War and lay happily for hours on end in his pram with nothing but a silver hare dangling from the pram hood for company. His
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Kate Atkinson |
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56b13ac
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Viola hadn't seen Sunny for nearly ten years and in the interim he had turned into a complete human being. ("Perhaps the two things aren't unrelated," Bertie said.)"
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Kate Atkinson |
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98f768e
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Nothing could be kept, he thought, everything ran through one's fingers like sand or water. Or time. Perhaps nothing should be kept. A monkish thought that he dismissed.
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Kate Atkinson |
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f883a52
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Nancy fell in love with Viola at first sight of her. A coup de foudre, she said, more intense and overwhelming than any form of romantic love. Mother and daughter were each a world to the other, complete and unassailable.
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Kate Atkinson |
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2bc1b71
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The college was run by a man called Mr. Carver whose lifelong passions were Esperanto and Pitman's shorthand, the latter more useful than the former.
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Kate Atkinson |
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8b5a4e7
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and no man gave you a fur coat without expecting to receive something in return. Except for one's husband, of course, who expected nothing beyond modest gratitude.
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romance
quid-pro-quo
marriage-advice
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Kate Atkinson |
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1c63b19
|
Teddy found himself thinking what a decent human being his father had been, the best of all the family really. The grief caught him unawares.
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Kate Atkinson |
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a107a3b
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Sometimes Teddy wondered if everyone had done well out of the war except for those who had fought in it.
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Kate Atkinson |
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731089d
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Ursula's heart tripped and skipped and flipped at the sight of him. The very object of her affection! The reason she had taken the long way round was on the unlikely chance that she might engineer an "accidental" meeting with Benjamin Cole. And here he was! What luck."
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Kate Atkinson |
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ad72c37
|
The sour aura of dissatisfaction that seeped through the walls, along with the even less appetizing smell of boiled cabbage, was really quite depressing. Ursula wanted her refugees to be soulful and romantic--fleeing for their cultural lives--rather than the abused wives of insurance clerks. Which was ridiculously unfair of her.
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Kate Atkinson |
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0d898e4
|
Because you couldn't make time, she'd been deluded about that. 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.
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Kate Atkinson |
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1c9d3ff
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pointing. She was completely hopeless.
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Kate Atkinson |
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47b1164
|
dystopia, a reliably clean, well-lighted place.
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Kate Atkinson |
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f844a87
|
What does it matter what people do? At the end of the day we're all dead.
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laissez-faire
morbid
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Kate Atkinson |
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1a49aaf
|
She could have happily lived inside any nineteenth century novel.
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reading
nineteenth-century
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Kate Atkinson |
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2e0b35f
|
I know," Ursula said, "it's like the Emperor's new clothes." --
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Kate Atkinson |
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da21fd2
|
What a good husband you are," Nancy said afterward, "always taking your wife's side rather than your mother's." "It's the side of reason I am on," Teddy said. "It just so happens that that's where you're always to be found and my mother rarely."
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Kate Atkinson |
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4691acf
|
They were both Filipino and laughed no matter what you said. Were the Philippines really such a happy place or were the carers just happy not to be there?
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Kate Atkinson |
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5b54929
|
Later, when she understood that it was the last time they would all be together, she wished she had paid more attention.
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Kate Atkinson |
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6a9a2ef
|
Sometimes you wondered why anyone bothered crawling out of the cradle when what lay ahead was so darn difficult.
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Kate Atkinson |
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710e0e9
|
let's face it, no one warned you about anything.
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Kate Atkinson |
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41e62e5
|
I really such a terrible mother?' she asked Bertie. 'Why the past tense?' Bertie said. Sow
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Kate Atkinson |
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c3b80e5
|
The last thing she wanted was people looking for her. No, that wasn't true--the last thing she wanted was people finding her.
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Kate Atkinson |
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6e42d35
|
Or was it, as everyone told her, and as she must believe, all in her head? And so what if it was--wasn't everything in her head real too? What if there was no demonstrable reality? What if there was nothing beyond the mind? Philosophers "came to grips" with this problem a long time ago, Dr."
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Kate Atkinson |
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577c0d2
|
Chivalry requireth that youth should be trained to perform the most laborious and humble offices with cheerfulness and grace.
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Kate Atkinson |
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b5eb12a
|
You couldn't necessarily judge a woman by the man she slept with. (Or could you?) Eva
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Kate Atkinson |
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2547d7a
|
There's too much history in York, the past is so crowded that sometimes it feels as if there's no room for the living.
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Kate Atkinson |
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70450bc
|
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage.
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Kate Atkinson |
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51c057d
|
I like this dog," he said, rubbing the dog's head. "He's a very straightforward kind of dog."
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Kate Atkinson |
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190aa43
|
who is to say which of these is real and which a fiction? In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.
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Kate Atkinson |
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cf8296a
|
I have no idea how to love another human being unless it's by tearing them to pieces and eating them.
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Kate Atkinson |
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a880bfe
|
When everything else has gone, love still remains," Dr. Hunter said. "Totally," Reggie said. But what good did it do you? None at all."
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Kate Atkinson |
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9e5fef9
|
names that were so bad that when they dared to whisper them (bitch-cunt-whore-poet) to each other beneath the bedclothes, they were like poison in the air.
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Kate Atkinson |
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b796a1c
|
One of the things Jackson liked about Julia was her independence, one of the things he didn't like about Julia was her independence.
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Kate Atkinson |
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2a5e6c8
|
There were doorways between this world and the next, she said, but only certain people could pass through them.
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Kate Atkinson |
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36a7b5a
|
No one was amused now. ('The clowns are the dangerous ones,' Perry said.)
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Kate Atkinson |
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b194c11
|
Don't let your imagination run away with you, Miss Armstrong. But why would you not when the reality was so awful? And that was that. Juliet's war.
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Kate Atkinson |
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003fe96
|
hooligan posse of gulls wheeled noisily overhead,
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Kate Atkinson |
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f42011f
|
About the Book He had been reconciled to death during the war and then suddenly the war was over and there was a next day and a next day and a next day.
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Kate Atkinson |