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111e462
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It was the kind of love (lust, to be honest about it) that survivors of disasters must practise - or people who are anticipating disaster - free of all restraint, savage at times and yet strangely tender and affectionate.
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Kate Atkinson |
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49b73ea
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I had an idea of him,' Ursula said, 'but the idea wasn't him. Perhaps I wanted to fall in love.
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Kate Atkinson |
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effcfd1
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We could buy a sewing machine and share it," Charlene said. "We could buy cloth and spools of thread and paper patterns and spend pleasant winter evenings dressmaking together. Perhaps by the soft light from beautiful glass oil lamps. We could sit in a pool of golden light from the beautiful glass oil lamps and our silver needles would glimmer and flash as we bowed our heads to the simple yet honest work." But"
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Kate Atkinson |
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d47a1f0
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Well, we all get on,' Sylvie said, 'one way or another. And in the end we all arrive at the same place. I hardly see that it matters how we get there.' It
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Kate Atkinson |
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cffc33c
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bluestocking, Nancy. Married life has quite changed something
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Kate Atkinson |
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077199c
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She opened her arms to the black bat and they flew to each other, embracing in the air like long-lost souls. This is love, Ursula thought. And the practice of it makes it perfect.
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Kate Atkinson |
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4f0a52b
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Being kind modified the extraordinary, alarming otherness of him, which was threefold--large, male and American.
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Kate Atkinson |
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0a0d3f9
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I run to death, and death meets me as fast, And all my pleasures are like yesterday.
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Kate Atkinson |
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d0a5a79
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She had never chosen death over life before and as she was leaving she knew something had cracked and broken and the order of things had changed. Then the dark obliterated all thoughts.
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Kate Atkinson |
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6ffe152
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Of course, the Fuhrer promised a lot of things. It was what had got him where he was today.
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Kate Atkinson |
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3f881e4
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This is Martin Canning, Neil. He's written a wonderful book." "Fantastic," Neil Winters said, shaking Martin's hand. His hand was damp and soft and made Martin think of something dead you might pick up on the beach. "The first of many, I"
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Kate Atkinson |
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dce793a
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Hindsight's a wonderful thing,' Klara said. 'If we all had it there would be no history to write about.' She
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Kate Atkinson |
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6844936
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Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested. Eva
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Kate Atkinson |
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379f165
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He likes women, children, dogs, really what can you fault?' Pamela wrote. 'It's just a shame he's a dictator with no respect for the law or common humanity.
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Kate Atkinson |
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416ef9a
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She could have started up a branch library (or a spectacular house fire)
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Kate Atkinson |
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7236c2e
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she had never been pregnant, never been a mother or a wife and it was only when she realized that it was too late, that it could never be, that she understood what it was that she had lost.
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Kate Atkinson |
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6cf8604
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Love of fate?' 'It means acceptance. Whatever happens to you, embrace it, the good and the bad equally. Death is just one more thing to be embraced, I suppose.
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Kate Atkinson |
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9f9cd68
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People who live on their own do tend to witter. We live without restraint, verbal at any rate.' Nigel
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Kate Atkinson |
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2517ada
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I heard someone say once that hindsight was a wonderful thing, that without it there would be no history.
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Kate Atkinson |
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f5d127d
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That was the moment at which he realized that he had possibly become unhinged. What did it matter? The whole world was unhinged.
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Kate Atkinson |
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0c0d374
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Daddy said he would rather we were alive and cowards than dead and heroes.
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Kate Atkinson |
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95234a7
|
Powerful men needed their women to be unchallenging, the home should not be an arena for intellectual debate.
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Kate Atkinson |
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0e83448
|
now Viola could see the value of sounding chirpy even when you didn't feel like it. You were more likely to get what you wanted, for one thing.
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Kate Atkinson |
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25e1d1b
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'Why did you have children?' Bertie asked, later in their lives. 'Was it just the biological imperative to breed?' 'That's why everyone has children,' Viola said. 'They just dress it up as something more sentimental.') Viola
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Kate Atkinson |
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bd370d1
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step
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Kate Atkinson |
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8e4f969
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How deceptive that could be. One could lose everything in the blink of an eye, the slip of a foot.
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Kate Atkinson |
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0d11b75
|
Sylvie considered that children should be toughened up early, the better to take the blows in later life.
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Kate Atkinson |
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4b0a8f5
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She prayed now, with desperate conviction but no faith, and she suspected it made no difference either way. When
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Kate Atkinson |
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1fee555
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It was impossible to instruct on the subject of beauty, of course. It simply was.
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Kate Atkinson |
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8b43478
|
You did not need a God (Sylvie was an unconfessed atheist) to believe in sin. She
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Kate Atkinson |
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b340f8b
|
Art is anything created by one person and enjoyed by another.
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Kate Atkinson |
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8675d7f
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She remembered holding Pamela's babies - remembered Teddy and Jimmy, too - how overwhelming the feelings of love and terror, the desperate desire to protect. How much stronger would those feelings be if it were her own child? Perhaps too strong to bear. Over
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Kate Atkinson |
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4bd262b
|
Ursula missed the sound of church bells. There were so many simple things she had taken for granted before the war. She wished that she could go back and appreciate them properly.
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Kate Atkinson |
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b1028a1
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Home was an idea, and like Arcadia it was lost in the past. She
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Kate Atkinson |
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4beeaf7
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So, what do they pay you for...exactly?" Slapped around. Tied up. Beaten. Given orders, made to do things." "What kind of things?" "You know." No, I can't even begin to imagine." "Lick my boots, crawl on floor, eat like dog." "Nothing useful, then, like hoovering?"
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Kate Atkinson |
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0404eee
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genuine sentiment rather than just nostalgia, always a bit of a cheap emotion
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Kate Atkinson |
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54a4223
|
What did science ever do for the world, apart from make better ways of killing people?
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Kate Atkinson |
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3c90e16
|
if there was one thing she found more tedious than thinking about politics it was talking about politics. And
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Kate Atkinson |
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2462555
|
It was extraordinary how far you could go in London and barely touch a pavement or cross a road.
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Kate Atkinson |
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cfb7a76
|
Teddy wandered amongst the graves. Most of the people in them had died long before his time. Ursula was picking up conkers from the stand of magnificent horse chestnuts at the far end of the churchyard. They were enormous trees and Teddy wondered if their roots had intertwined with the bones of the dead, imagined them curling a path through ribcages and braceleting ankles and fettering wrists. When
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Kate Atkinson |
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f8cce68
|
He smelled of cloves and pipe tobacco and had a twinkly look about him as if he were going to toast muffins or read a particularly good story to her, but instead he beamed at Ursula and said, "So, I hear you tried to kill your maid?" (Oh, that's why I'm here, Ursula thought.)"
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Kate Atkinson |
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68001a3
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Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested. E
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Kate Atkinson |
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86fce75
|
Maybe we're all the living dead, reconstituted from the dust of the dead.
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Kate Atkinson |
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f5d6b95
|
I'm a shadow of my former self," she announces. Vinny was a shadow to begin with, now she's a shadow of a shadow."
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Kate Atkinson |