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e7821be
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Louise was an urbanite, she preferred the gut-thrilling sound of an emergency siren slicing through the night to the noise of country birds at dawn. Pub brawls, rackety roadworks, mugged tourists, the badlands on a Saturday night - they all made sense, they were all part of the huge, dirty, torn social fabric. There was a war raging out there in the city and she was part of the fight, but the countryside unsettled her because she didn't kno..
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women
country
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Kate Atkinson |
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242e179
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Do you keep time in the same place that you save it? If so why is it always so difficult to find? It must be in a very safe place.
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Kate Atkinson |
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e7cf9ac
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In the half-century of his life, a tick on the Doomsday clock, he had borne witness to the most unbelievable technological advances. He had started off listening to an old Bush radio in the corner of the living room and now he had a phone in his hand on which he could pretend to throw a scrunched-up piece of paper into a waste bin. The world had waited a long time for that.
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crime-fiction
technology
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Kate Atkinson |
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3aaab7e
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It was funny because she thought of herself as a good team player, although sometimes she suspected that no one else on her team did.
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Kate Atkinson |
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7ba29c8
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Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.
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Kate Atkinson |
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6d3a55c
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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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7bf6283
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And who thought it was a good idea to rent bicycles to Italian adolescent language students? If hell did exist, which Jackson was sure it did, it would be governed by a committee of fifteen-year-old Italian boys on bikes.
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summer
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Kate Atkinson |
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2dc8c98
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I'm not myself," she said and then laughed maniacally, "but God knows who I am."
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Kate Atkinson |
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0bc4e6f
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what if she were simply to open her bedroom window and throw herself out, head first? Would she really be able to come back and start again? 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. Kellet had ..
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Kate Atkinson |
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c9ecefc
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The Grim Reaper, Gloria corrected herself - if anyone deserved capital letters it was surely Death. Gloria would rather like to be the Grim Reaper. She wouldn't necessarily be grim, she suspected she would be quite cheerful (Come along now, don't make such a fuss).
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Kate Atkinson |
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a2c391a
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Moments left, Teddy thought. 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 as fragile as a bird's heartbeat, fleeting as the bluebells in the wood. It didn't matter, he realized, he didn't mind, he was going where millions had gone before and where millions would follow after. He shared his ..
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Kate Atkinson |
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eb2448d
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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?
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reality
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Kate Atkinson |
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c3a9ae3
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He wanted to be deafened by the thunder of her engines, he needed to be drained of every thought by the cold, the noise, the equal amounts of boredom and adrenalin. He had believed once that he would be formed by the architecture of war, but now he realized, he had been erased by it.
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Kate Atkinson |
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3f43b2c
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Before the beginning is the void and the void belongs in neither time nor space and is therefore beyond our imagination. Nothing will come of nothing unless it's the beginning of the world. This is how it begins, with the word and the word is life. The void is transformed by a gigantic firecracker allowing time to dawn and imagination to begin.
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Kate Atkinson |
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2741a63
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Perhaps sex was something you had to learn and then stick at until you were good at it, like hockey or the piano. But an initial lesson would be helpful.
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Kate Atkinson |
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3261b38
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Juliet and Hartley had long ago abandoned manners with each other. It was refreshing to behave without respect towards someone.
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Kate Atkinson |
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1c0936a
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When she was little they had lived in an old farmhouse too, in the middle of nothing of but landscape.
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Kate Atkinson |
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476ec2f
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Duke was a burly, barrel-shaped Rottweiler made up of muscle and solid fat and built like a wrestler, a dog that looked like it was permanently on the verge of dying of boredom. He shook his weighty head as if he was being plagued by ear-mites and dislodged a scatter of small romantic words like a broken rope of pearls.
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Kate Atkinson |
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b8d44ad
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Secrets had the power to kill a marriage,she said. Nonsense, Sylvie said,it was secrets that could save a marriage.
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secrets
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Kate Atkinson |
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2d3703c
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Sylvie was surprised by the rabid patriotism of the women on the platform, surely war should make pacifists of all women?
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Kate Atkinson |
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e1cb48a
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Everything changes and nothing remains still. PLATO, Cratylus
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Kate Atkinson |
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155ae75
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People always said they wanted the truth, but really they were perfectly content with a facsimile.
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Kate Atkinson |
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83ffd43
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she could see Sylvie and her friends on the lawn below, their dresses fluttering like moths in the encroaching dusk.
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Kate Atkinson |
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46e2e79
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it had probably been a long enough life. Yet suddenly it all seemed like an illusion, a dream that had happened to someone else. What an odd thing existence was.
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illusion
life
life-is-a-dream
reflection
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Kate Atkinson |
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ea9c004
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Life is too precious to be unhappy.' Ursula wondered how many people across London were saying the same thing that night. Perhaps in less salubrious surroundings. And there would be others, of course, who would be saying the same words to cleave to what they already had, not to discard it on a whim. Suddenly
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Kate Atkinson |
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a1aaa72
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Lily was a Fabian, a society suffragette who risked nothing for her beliefs.
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Kate Atkinson |
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2e49600
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Amelia envisaged that between York and the royal-infested Scottish Highlands there was a grimy wasteland of derelict cranes and abandoned mills and betrayed, yet still staunch, people. Oh and moorland, of course, vast tracts of brooding landscape under lowering skies, and across this heath strode brooding, lowering men intent on reaching their ancestral houses, where they were going to fling open doors and castigate orphaned yet resolute go..
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humor
gothic-romance
heath
york
literary-allusions
scotland
jane-eyre
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Kate Atkinson |
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74894b5
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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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a6c9470
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No point in thinking," she said briskly, "you just have to get on with life." (She really was turning into Miss Woolf.) "We only have one after all, we should try and do our best. We can never get it right, but we must try." (The transformation was complete.) "What if we had a chance to do it again and again," Teddy said, "until we finally did get it right? Wouldn't that be wonderful?" "I think it would be exhausting."
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Kate Atkinson |
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1a1b5e1
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Because that was how it happened: one moment you were there, laughing, talking, breathing, and the next you were gone. Forever. And there wasn't even a shape left in the world where you'd been, neither the trace of a smile nor the whisper of a word. Just nothing.
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Kate Atkinson |
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fe861ad
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They're definitely going to declare war tomorrow. In the morning. It's probably timed so that the nation can get down on its collective knees in church and pray for deliverance.' 'Oh, yes, war is always so Christian, isn't it?
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Kate Atkinson |
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b25bc5c
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He was the perfect gentleman and, unlike the salesmen in the Fitzrovia hotel, there were no attempts at fumbling--in fact they often performed an awkward little dance around their small office to avoid touching at all, as if Juliet were a desk or a chair, not a girl in her prime. It seemed that she had acquired all the drawbacks of being a mistress and none of the advantages--like sex. (She was becoming bolder with the word, if not the act...
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Kate Atkinson |
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18b634a
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The brooding landscape they were currently traversing, the lowering sky above their heads and the rugged terrain beneath their feet, were all conspiring to make her feel like an unfortunate Bronte sister, traipsing endlessly across the moors after unobtainable fulfillment. Perry himself was not entirely without Heathcliffian qualities--the absence of levity, the ruthless disregard for a girl's comfort, the way he had of scrutinizing you as ..
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Kate Atkinson |
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db29193
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Now it would not be the geography of Empire that would make him, it would be the architecture of war.
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Kate Atkinson |
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c2e18f0
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Tracy thought she must be missing something, it felt like the same world as ever to her. The rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, kids everywhere falling through the cracks. The Victorians would have recognized it. People just watched a lot more TV and found celebrities interesting, that was all that was different.
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Kate Atkinson |
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3dcdfe4
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no book could ever be left in the condition you found it in because it was changed every time it was read by someone.
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Kate Atkinson |
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990c13d
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continually amazed at just how many skills and crafts could go into making "a lovely home"--the patchwork quilts you could sew, the curtains you could ruffle, the cucumbers you could pickle, the rhubarb you could make into jam, the icing-sugar decorations you could create for your Christmas cake--which you were supposed to make in September at the latest (for heaven's sake)--and at the same time remember to plant your indoor bulbs so they w..
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Kate Atkinson |
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04f6d59
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Sacrifice, by its nature, was predicated on giving, not receiving. " 'Sacrifice,' " he remembered"
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Kate Atkinson |
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baedaf4
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A lone fisherman up early looking for sea trout found the first body.
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Kate Atkinson |
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eaa6096
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Amelia looked at the eggs-like sickly, jaundiced eyes-and thought of her own eggs, a handful left, old shrivelled like musty dried fruit where once they must have been bursting toward the light-
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Kate Atkinson |
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8e521d8
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The Knights' Code," which he had learned by heart from Scouting for Boys, a book he frequently turned to in times of uncertainty, even now in his self-exile from the movement, demanded that "Chivalry requireth that youth should be trained to perform the most laborious and humble offices with cheerfulness and grace." He supposed entertaining Izzie was one of those occasions. It was certainly laborious."
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Kate Atkinson |
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c5a0ceb
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All the men in the family" went to the school, his Hampstead grandmother said (his only grandmother, Sylvie's mother having died long ago), as if it were a law, written down in ancient times. Teddy supposed his own son would have to go there too, although this boy existed in a future that Teddy couldn't even begin to imagine. He didn't need to, of course, for in that future he had no sons, only a daughter, Viola, something which would be a ..
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Kate Atkinson |
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8e1dacd
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He caught the look on her face, a mixture of distaste and confusion which eventually resolved into something more cryptic. Women usually needed to be acquainted with him a little longer before he saw that expression on their faces.
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Kate Atkinson |
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21143f9
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There is a Hindu legend that tells us that there was once a time when all men were gods, but they abused their divinity. Brahma, the god of creation, concluded that people had lost the right to their divinity and decided to take it away from them. Wanting to hide it somewhere where they wouldn't be able to find it, he called a council of all the gods to advise him. Some suggested that they bury it deep in the earth, others that they sink it..
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Kate Atkinson |