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b0fd80e
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T]he parent-child relationship was one way, you gave them all your love and they were under no obligation to pay a penny back. Of course, if they did love you then that was the icing on the cake with cherries on top. And chocolate shavings and those little silver balls that cracked your fillings.
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Kate Atkinson |
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93f8719
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the great novels of the world were about three things - death, money and sex. Occasionally a whale.
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Kate Atkinson |
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93a6607
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Human nature favors the tribal. Tribalism engenders violence. It was ever thus and so it will ever be.
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violence
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Kate Atkinson |
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fa2dfa7
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Her true hope was that something would happen in the course of her time abroad that would mean she need never take the place. What that 'something' was she had no idea.
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hope
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Kate Atkinson |
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bd67e06
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Juliet felt slighted yet relieved. It was curious how you could hold two quite opposing feelings at the same time, an unsettling emotional discord. She felt an odd pang at the sight of him. She had been fond of him. She had been his girl. Reader, I didn't marry him, she thought.
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Kate Atkinson |
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6f4d414
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It would be like a Hardy novel, before it all goes wrong.
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Kate Atkinson |
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025b42a
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She... applied makeup, enough to have made an effort, not enough to be blatantly a woman...
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Kate Atkinson |
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6df9c9b
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Slattern! What a wonderful new word. 'Slattern,' I murmur appreciatively to Patricia. 'Yes, slattern,' Bunty says firmly. 'That's what she is.' 'Not a slut like you then?' Patricia says very quietly. Loud enough to be heard, but too quiet to be believed.
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Kate Atkinson |
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c3a54d3
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This was love. It didn't come free, you paid in pain. Your own. But then nobody ever said love was easy. Well, they did, but they were idiots.
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Kate Atkinson |
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fbe0ff5
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Now we must feast!' Dorothy declared as they headed indoors. Not on the baby, but on its placenta, fried by Jeanette with onions and parsley. Viola declined her portion - it seemed like cannibalism, not to mention utterly disgusting.
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Kate Atkinson |
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12f814c
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What was that from? ? But perhaps, truth was asleep until the end of reckoning. There was going to be an awful lot of reckoning when the time came.
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Kate Atkinson |
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36153e8
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the doors of perception are hanging crazily off their hinges these days.
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Kate Atkinson |
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d7f7127
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Stella was one of Mr Bullock's 'chorus girls' and confessed (readily) to being a 'striptease artiste' but Mr Armitage the opera singer said, "We're all artistes here, darling." "What a bloody fairy that man is," Mr Bullock muttered, "put him in the army, that would sort him out." "I doubt it," Miss Woolf said. (And it did rather beg the question why the strapping Mr Bullock himself had not been called up for active service.) "So," Mr Bulloc..
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Kate Atkinson |
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29ef369
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We're just cogs in a machine really, aren't we?" Miss Fawcett said to her and Ursula said, "But remember, without the cog there is no machine."
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Kate Atkinson |
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0eefe54
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She supposed she was a little cog in the big wheel of Empire. "Nothing wrong with being a cog," Maurice said, himself now a big wheel in the Home Office. "The world needs cogs."
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Kate Atkinson |
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94de9fe
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I was distracted suddenly from these pleasant thoughts by noticing that, like the eyes in certain portraits, Heather's nipples seemed to have the uncanny ability to follow you around the room. This is the kind of observation that once made, cannot be unmade. Unfortunately.
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Kate Atkinson |
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b25b3b1
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Personally, I don't think it right to make up things about real people--although I suppose there's an argument for saying that once you're dead you're not real any more. But then we have to define what we mean by real and none of us wants to go down that tortuous path because we all know where it leads (madness or a first-class honours, or both).
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Kate Atkinson |
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7346a0b
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War is Man's greatest fall from grace, of course, especially perhaps when we feel a moral imperative to fight it and find ourselves twisted into ethical knots. We can never doubt (ever) the courage of those men in the Halifaxes and Stirlings and Lancasters but the bombing war was undoubtedly a brutish affair, a crude method employing a blunt weapon, continually hampered by the weather and lack of technology (despite massive advances that wa..
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Kate Atkinson |
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d566e4e
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This was their third bar since Piccadilly and they were both agreed that the two of them were very drunk but had the capacity to get a good deal drunker yet.
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Kate Atkinson |
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cc89224
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On the outside of the bedroom door there was a plaque that said . On the way up, Jackson noticed that other bedrooms also had names - .Jackson wondered how you decided on a name for a room. Or a doll. Or a child, for that matter. The naming of dogs seemed even more perplexing.
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Kate Atkinson |
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02e9641
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They had triumphed over death this night. Sylvie wondered when death would seek his revenge.
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Kate Atkinson |
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3275345
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You could guarantee a decent cup of coffee in Betty's, but it went beyond the decent coffee and the respectable girls (and women) who had been parcelled up some time in the 1930s and freshly unwrapped this morning. It was the way that everything was exactly right and fitting. And clean.
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Kate Atkinson |
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36af6a3
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That was how history worked, wasn't it? If it wasn't written down it never existed. You might leave behind jewelry and pottery, ornamental tombs, you might leave behind your own bones to be dug up at a later age, but none of those artifacts could express how you .
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Kate Atkinson |
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7f0a3ea
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A handful of heartbeats. That was what life was. A heartbeat followed by a heartbeat. A breath followed by a breath. One moment followed by another moment and then there was a last moment. Life was a s fragile as a bird's heartbeat, fleeting as the bluebells in the wood.
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Kate Atkinson |
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85edbc9
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Best always to praise rather than criticize.
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Kate Atkinson |
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7e91619
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What a good husband you are", Nancy said afterward, "always taking your wife's side rather thn 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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7247707
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Why was it that the females of the species were always the ones left to tidy up, she wondered? I expect Jesus came out of the tomb...and said to his mother, "Can you tidy it up a bit back there?"
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gender-roles
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Kate Atkinson |
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7e33ae3
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Across the world millions of lives are altered by the absence of the dead, but three members of Teddy's last crew--Clifford the bomb-aimer, Fraser, the injured pilot, and Charlie, the tail-end Charlie--all bail out successfully from and see out the rest of the war in a POW camp. On their return they all marry and have children, fractals of the future.
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butterfly-effect
ripple-effect
alternate-universe
twist-ending
kate-atkinson
fractals
ending
dead
survivors
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Kate Atkinson |
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916198c
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shop-bought cakes are a sign of sluttish housewifery.
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Kate Atkinson |
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9b8251b
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But I know nothing; my future is a wide-open vista, leading to an unknown country - The Rest Of My Life.
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life
inspirational
knowledge
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Kate Atkinson |
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2b151fe
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History is all about 'what ifs
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Kate Atkinson |
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237f1ac
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Small boys were a mystery to Sylvie. The satisfaction they gained from throwing sticks or stones for hours on end, the obsessive collection of inanimate objects, the brutal destruction of the fragile world around them, all seemed at odds with the men they were supposed to become.
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men
little-boys
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Kate Atkinson |
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2447051
|
Good news?' Gloria queried. She wondered if Emily was pregnant again (was that good news?), so she was taken aback when Emily said, 'I've found Jesus.' 'Oh,' Gloria said. 'Where was he?
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Kate Atkinson |
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95dbb45
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' he said. You had to wonder about the French, how they could make a simple 'sorry' sound so extreme and forlorn.
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humor
forlorn
sorry
language
french
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Kate Atkinson |
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ce4fa7b
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Time isn't circular," she said to Dr. Kellet. "It's like a... palimpsest."
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Kate Atkinson |
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9d8010d
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The purpose of Art is to convey the truth of a thing, not to be the truth itself." SYLVIE BERESFORD TODD"
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Kate Atkinson |
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c983598
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If he hadn't been the father of her children, Viola might have admired Dominic for the way he was so easily able to absolve himself of all obligation simply by asserting his right to self-fulfilment.
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Kate Atkinson |
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a8cf0eb
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You said five little words to someone--How can I help you?--and it was as if you'd mortgaged your soul out to them.
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Kate Atkinson |
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1529927
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Sacrifice, by its nature, was predicated on giving, not receiving.
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Kate Atkinson |
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04ec397
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There were many things Viola could have said at this point. She had thought of all of them while gazing at the forest, the sacred river, the birds, 'I'm sorry' being foremost, but instead she told him about the dream. 'And then you turned to me and you were smiling and you said, "We did it, Mum! Everyone got on the train."' 'I don't think it was about the train.' 'No,' Viola agreed. 'It was how I felt when you spoke to me.' 'Which was?' 'Ov..
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Kate Atkinson |
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b1b3092
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First things were good, last things not so much so.
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Kate Atkinson |
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3e2da54
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Doing nothing was much more productive than people thought; Jackson often had his most profound insights when he appeared to be entirely idle. He didn't get bored, he just went into a nothing kind of place.
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Kate Atkinson |
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bd4f73e
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Women seemed to him to be in possession of all kinds of undesirable properties, chiefly madness.
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Kate Atkinson |
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d6ddb51
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I loved him so much. Love him so much. I don't know why I use the past tense. It's not as if love dies with the beloved.
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Kate Atkinson |