db32c41
|
Of course, I don't believe in God,' Dr Kellet said. 'But I believe in heaven. One has to,
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
e5a14cd
|
Louise remembered that odd fluttery feeling of having a freewheeling baby inside you, independent and dependent at the same time, an eternal maternal dialectic.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
330d7fb
|
It was just as well the baby was strapped into his high chair, because every so often he would suddenly fling out his arms and legs and try to launch himself into the air like a suicidal starfish.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
114356e
|
From here he could see the farmer's daughter in the yard, feeding the geese. Wasn't there a nursery rhyme in there somewhere? No, he was thinking of the farmer's wife, wasn't he?--cutting off tails with a carving knife. A horrid image. Poor mice, he had thought when he was a boy. Still thought the same now that he was a man. Nursery rhymes were brutal affairs.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
0edad00
|
There was something to be said for dying before you ended up in incontinence pads, watching an endless loop of reruns of Friends.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
b42b4f9
|
The toll of the dead had been her business during the war, the endless stream of figures that represented the blitzed and the bombed passed across her desk to be collated and recorded. They had seemed overwhelming, but the greater figures--the six million dead, the fifty million dead, the numberless infinities of souls--were in a realm beyond comprehension.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
2ea7e29
|
Do not equate nationalism with patriotism," Perry warned Juliet. "Nationalism is the first step on the road to Fascism.")"
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
9f4dca6
|
Ursula had grown rather callous about George Glover's lungs, she had heard so much of them that they seemed to have a life of their own, rather like Sylvie's mother's lungs, organs that seemed to have more character than their owner.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
ccfa7c4
|
That was the one thing June had been terrified of having - a standard life, an ordinary life, a life like her parents' - living in a pink sandstone semi-detached villa in the suburbs with a neat garden and an en-suite master bedroom with fitted wardrobes
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
b32c4dc
|
Life is too precious to be unhappy.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
4d86a6f
|
He preferred solitary pursuits, and being a member of a group seemed rather dutiful, but he could do dutiful and somebody had to or the world would fall apart.
|
|
duty
|
Kate Atkinson |
8261b1c
|
It had been a while since Juliet had shared her bed with anyone. There had been a few, but she thought of them as mistakes rather than lovers,
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
5067a29
|
He loved his wife and daughter. It was perhaps a stalwart affection rather than a magnificent obsession, but nonetheless he didn't doubt that if called upon to do so he would sacrifice his own life in a heartbeat for them. And he also knew that there would be no more hankering for something else, something beyond, for the hot slices of colour or the intensity of war or romance. That was all behind him, he had a different kind of duty now, n..
|
|
family
|
Kate Atkinson |
9eb390e
|
The beauty of the pearl was just the poor oyster trying to protect itself from the grit. From the truth...
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
b9bc4be
|
I need to talk to you." "People always say that," Hartley said grimly, "but usually what they need is not to talk."
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
5d31e9f
|
She wanted to be left alone in peace, to disappear into her own quiet world and meditate upon death. Death. Yes, she could form that blunt, obscene word too. But instead she was the one who was going to have to be kind and strong and say that everything was going to be all right (which it clearly was not) and that she had "come to terms with it."
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
beff52b
|
Best to avoid morbid thoughts", Ursula counselled, advice that would stand him in good stead for the next three years. For the rest of his life, in fact."
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
cfa1181
|
her. It was a cruel thing, trying to sprout and find the light of day. It was truth. She wasn't sure that she wanted it.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
dc1512e
|
Each reported on a myriad others, filaments in an evangelistic web of treachery that stretched across the country.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
0f571f8
|
No woman was ever truly safe. It didn't matter if you were as tough as Sigourney Weaver in Alien Resurrection or Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 because wherever you went there were men.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
fb1a27c
|
Giselle would rouse herself from her torpor occasionally (she moved like a particularly lazy cat) in order to despise something.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
3167452
|
It just went to show, you never knew what you were going to feel until you felt it.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
f97afc1
|
The world inside his head was so much better than the world outside his head.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
33dbf19
|
'Do not equate nationalism with patriotism,' Perry warned Juliet. 'Nationalism is the first step on the road to Fascism.')
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
5bef24a
|
She didn't feel she had the fortitude for all those Tudors, they were so relentlessly busy - all that bedding and beheading.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
008146d
|
She was the deer. She was the arrow, She was the queen. She was the contradiction, She was the synthesis. Juliet ran.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
0046255
|
quoting Elizabeth I. Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
fda8e20
|
The wounds of war, Juliet thought, rather pleased with the way the words sounded in her head. It could be the title of a novel. Perhaps she should write one. But wasn't artistic endeavor the final refuge of the uncommitted?
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
868cf70
|
Don't let your imagination run away with you..." But why would you not when the reality was so awful?"
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |