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3e63805
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Scars heal," Sylvie said. "Even the worst ones."
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Kate Atkinson |
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b926fba
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One's own life seemed puny against the background of so much history.
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Kate Atkinson |
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257f3c0
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Kittens were in continual abundance on the farm, there was a kind of kitten currency in the neighborhood, they were bartered for all kinds of emotional regret or fulfillment by parents - a doll lost, an exam passed.
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Kate Atkinson |
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96d2ff4
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The whole edifice of civilization turned out to be constructed from an unstable mix of quicksand and imagination.
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Kate Atkinson |
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426de77
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I think there is something wrong with the human race. It undermines everything one would like to believe in, don't you think?
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Kate Atkinson |
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f9708a7
|
although anyone with half a brain must surely be mired in existential gloom all the time)
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Kate Atkinson |
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532d92c
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I am mad, I think. I am mad therefore I think. I am mad therefore I think I am.
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Kate Atkinson |
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6e00504
|
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."
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Kate Atkinson |
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f8a01ce
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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?
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Kate Atkinson |
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0ea6bdd
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The man who was speaking had a degree in jargon and a doctorate in nonsense.
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Kate Atkinson |
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8ff33d4
|
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 i..
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Kate Atkinson |
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e2dba28
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She felt as if she had been on the outside of happiness her whole life.
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Kate Atkinson |
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1596fd4
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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.
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Kate Atkinson |
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8c5cfa2
|
The future was coming nearer, one relentless goose step after the next. Juliet could still remember when Hitler had seemed like a harmless clown. No one was amused now. ("The clowns are the dangerous ones," Perry said.)" --
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Kate Atkinson |
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7715fa5
|
A 'career woman,'" Sylvie said, as if the two words had no place in the same sentence. "A spinster," she added, contemplating the word. Ursula wondered why her mother was working so hard to rile her. "Perhaps you will never marry," Sylvie said, as if in conclusion, as if Ursula's life was as good as over. "Would that be such a bad thing? 'The unmarried daughter,'" Ursula said, tucking into an iced fancy. "It was good enough for Jane Austen...
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Kate Atkinson |
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b1e4497
|
She had had affairs over the years ... but 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. Pamela's life would go on after she was dead, her descendants spreading through the world like the waters of a delta, but when Ursula died she would simply end. A stream that ran dry.
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Kate Atkinson |
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96fc5bf
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Just because something bad had happened to her doesn't mean it won't happen again.
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Kate Atkinson |
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c5301c6
|
The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel,
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Kate Atkinson |
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9aba4de
|
He was a baby once, she thought. New and perfect, cradled in his mother's arms. The mysterious Sylvie. Now he was a feathery husk, ready to blow away. His eyes were half open, milky, like an old dog, and his mouth had grown beaky with the extremity of age, opening and closing, a fish out of water. Bertie could feel a continual tremor running through him, an electrical current, the faint buzz of life. Or death, perhaps. Energy was gathering ..
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Kate Atkinson |
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a73c04c
|
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 Teddy's.
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imagination
heartwrenching
teddy-todd
alternate-universe
twist-ending
tearjerker
kate-atkinson
last-lines
heartbreaking
what-if
ending
sad
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Kate Atkinson |
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63ee5c4
|
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.
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Kate Atkinson |
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8796172
|
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.
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Kate Atkinson |
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bff5911
|
In the end we all arrive at the same place. I hardly see that it matters how we get there." It seemed to Ursula that you got there was the whole point."
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Kate Atkinson |
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6e242dd
|
If she had been in charge of designing the human race she would have gone about things differently. (A golden shaft of light through the ear for conception perhaps and a well-fitting hatch somewhere modest for escape nine months later.)
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Kate Atkinson |
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c2522a2
|
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.
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Kate Atkinson |
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7cd0689
|
Dear God. When did language and meaning divorce each other and decide to go their separate ways?
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Kate Atkinson |
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c9af666
|
There was always a second before the siren started when she was aware of a sound as yet unheard. It was like an echo, or rather the opposite of an echo. An echo came afterwards, but was there a word for what came before?
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Kate Atkinson |
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a8c7d72
|
Fifty-five thousand, five hundred and seventy-three dead from Bomber Command. Seven million German dead, including the five hundred thousand killed by the Allied bombing campaign. The sixty million dead overall of the Second World War, including eleven million murdered in the Holocaust. The sixteen million of the First World War, over four million in Vietnam, forty million to the Mongol conquests, three and a half million to the Hundred Yea..
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Kate Atkinson |
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a085fd5
|
Perhaps we are on an insula ex machina, an artificial place not in the real world at all -- a backdrop for the stories we must tell.
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Kate Atkinson |
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a1f621a
|
She was born with the winter already in her bones.
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Kate Atkinson |
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ab66daa
|
It was possible, she thought, that she had won the race to reach the end of civilization. There was no prize. Obviously.
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Kate Atkinson |
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4a9fa07
|
I'm always so glad,' Sylvie murmured, 'that I don't have to take a turn at being other people.' 'You're very good at being yourself,' Ursula said, aware that it didn't necessarily sound like a compliment. 'Well, I've had years of practice.
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Kate Atkinson |
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36f94c2
|
Sylvia loved secrets and even if she didn't have any secrets she made sure that you thought she did. Amelia had no secrets, Amelia knew nothing. When she grew up she planned to know everything and to keep it all a secret.
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Kate Atkinson |
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247484d
|
Choice, it seemed, was one of the first casualties of war.
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Kate Atkinson |
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01b0759
|
but her mother's death had revealed that there was no metaphor too ostentatious for grief. It was a terrible thing and demanded embellishment.
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Kate Atkinson |
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c5e3d00
|
The past is a cupboard full of light and all you have to do is find the key that opens the door.
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past
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Kate Atkinson |
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eecaa64
|
Time is construct, in relativity every thing flows, no past or present, only the now.
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Kate Atkinson |
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bfc1f9e
|
He was part of the infinite. The tree and the rock and the water. The rising of the sun and the running of the deer.
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Kate Atkinson |
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b290ac4
|
How many times would he disappoint you in a day if you were married to him, Ursula wondered?
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marriage
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Kate Atkinson |
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795c792
|
She fed him scraps from her ragbag because words were all that were left now. Perhaps he could use them to pay the ferryman. The air rippled and shimmered. Time narrowed to a pinpoint. It was about to happen.
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death
edward-thomas
gerard-manley-hopkins
john-keats
kate-atkinson
literary-allusions
literary-quotes
william-blake
william-wordsworth
quotes
beautiful
william-shakespeare
dying
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Kate Atkinson |
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58c2cbe
|
Marriage is based on a more enduring kind of love.
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Kate Atkinson |
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4e78a6c
|
He was one of those people who stared at you with a meaningful smile on their face, as if he was somehow intellectually and spiritually superior, when the fact was he was simply socially inept.
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Kate Atkinson |
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92a7f4e
|
Get down,' Bunty says grimly. 'Mummy's thinking.' (Although what Mummy's actually doing is wondering what it would be like if her entire family was wiped out and she could start again.)
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Kate Atkinson |
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dcf34b5
|
Happiness, like life itself, was as fragile as a bird's heartbeat, as fleeting as the bluebells in the wood, but while it lasted,
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Kate Atkinson |