|
ed723e4
|
And she could be depressed if she wanted to be, she could sit and watch Dogs with Jobs on the National Geographic Channel and eat her way through a packet of chocolate bourbon biscuits if she felt like it because nobody cared about her. In fact, she could sit there all day, from Barney and Friends to Porn Babes Laid Bare, with hours of the Landscape Channel in between, and eat the contents of an entire biscuit factory until she was an obese..
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
a1491ad
|
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 Years War, the fall of Rome took seven million, the Napoleonic Wars took four mil..
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
96f72fa
|
There are some Buddhist philosophers (a branch referred to as Zen) who say that sometimes a bad thing happens to prevent a worse thing happening,
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
da598d0
|
Viola could start again--there are no second chances, life's not a rehearsal, blah, blah, blah--yes, but if she could, if she could retake the journey that wasn't really a journey, what would she do? She would learn how to love. Learning to Love, a painful but ultimately redemptive journey, displaying warmth and compassion as the author learns how to overcome loneliness and despair. The steps she takes to mend her relationship with her chil..
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
05b8f38
|
A van drew up in the centre of St. Helen's Square and disgorged several people dressed as zombies. The zombies proceeded to chase the men who were dressed as condoms. The condom men didn't seem very surprised, as if they were expecting to be chased by zombies. ("They pay for it," Bertie said.) Was this fun? Viola despaired. It was possible, she thought, that she had won the race to reach the end of civilization. There was no prize. Obviousl..
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
58b3866
|
One could lose everything in the blink of an eye, the slip of a foot. "One must avoid dark thoughts at all costs."
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
ba2fe68
|
I don't think I'd mind working on a cheese counter. It would leave my mind free to do whatever it wanted - which is nothing in particular, it's true, but I like being alone in my head, I'm used to it.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
e764f1c
|
Vinny rarely leaves the house so when she does it's an occasion of some importance to her. She spends a lot of time looking forward to a glimpse of the outside world and then, when she returns, even more time complaining about it.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
74e2894
|
royal blue frock coat covered in gold braid and, even more ridiculously, a top hat. Howell had such an imposing presence that rather than losing dignity in this flunky's outfit he actually made it seem strangely distinguished. Howell
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
5b3f137
|
They had been awestruck not only at the sight of the Alps by moonlight but by the depthless inky-black skies, pricked with thousands upon thousands of stars--bright seed broadcast by some generous god, Teddy thought, drifting dangerously close to the forsaken realm of poetry. There were sunsets and dawns of thrilling grandeur and once, on a run to Bochum, a spectacular show that the Northern Lights put on for them--a vibrating curtain of co..
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
9766d65
|
her proficiency in the Classics would somehow stand her in better stead when opening and closing filing-cabinet drawers and conducting endless searches among a sea of buff-coloured folders. It wasn't quite the 'interesting job' she had envisaged but it kept her attention and over the next ten years she rose slowly through the ranks, in the bridled way that women did. ('One day a woman will be Prime Minister,' Pamela said. 'Maybe even in our..
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
a65ec17
|
After Marlee was born they rented videos and fell asleep in front of them. Now, like so much else in Jackson's world, videos were obsolete.
|
|
videos
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
9586116
|
That was the problem with time travel, of course (apart from the impossibility) - one would always be a Cassandra, spreading doom with one's foreknowledge of events
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
27dc226
|
She was real and she was dead. And she was out there somewhere.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
2bb2a17
|
Nor, says Nora, do we want commonplace tales of hausfrau Angst, of the woman heroically making over her life with a handsome new lover, a beautiful child, a happy ending. Instead, we shall have murder and mayhem, plots and sub-plots, a mad woman in the attic, purloined diamonds, lost birthrights, heroic dogs, a soupcon of sex, a suspicion of philosophy.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
818df21
|
You couldn't necessarily judge a woman by the man she slept with. (Or could you?)
|
|
eva-braun
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
fd8a5cd
|
The plot thickens," he said, and wished he hadn't said that because it sounded like something from a bad detective novel. "I think we have a suspect." That didn't sound much better. "My house has just exploded, by the way." At least that was novel."
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
459ff94
|
Afterwards--because it turned out that there was to be an afterwards for Teddy--he resolved that he would try always to be kind. It was the best he could do. It was all that he could do. And it might be love, after all.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
960a072
|
Happiness, like life itself, was as fragile as a bird's heartbeat, as fleeting as the bluebells in the wood,
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
7230eb8
|
She'd had a glimpse of a possible future-the pretty cottage, the garden full of flowers and vegetables, bread in the oven, a bowl of strawberries on the table, the happy baby hitched on her hip while she threw corn to the chickens. It would be like a Hardy novel before it all goes wrong.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
195f437
|
She had never been without a book for as long as she could remember. An only child never is. Literature had fuelled her childhood fantasies and convinced her that one day she would be the heroine of her own narrative.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
5300b72
|
She seemed to have no inkling that life wasn't as orderly as her pencil case and that everything is chance and at any moment any number of remarkable things can happen that are totally beyond our control, events that rip up our maps and re-polarize our compasses - the madwoman walking towards us, the train falling off the bridge, the boy on the bicycle.
|
|
life
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
6e09c3c
|
Diamond Jubilee with him for extra contrition. Her father was clearly exhausted, sleeping almost all the time now, like an aged dog. Why didn't he just go? Was he hanging on for a hundred? Two more years of this? It was mere existence--an amoeba had more life. "The triumph of the human spirit," the new nursing sister said, new enough to talk about "positive outcomes" and "enhancement programmes"--emollient management-speak, meaningless to m..
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
4f9d35f
|
I'm always so glad," Sylvie murmured, "that I don't have to take a turn at being other people."
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
bf35bb6
|
A woman should be a comfort and a relief, a restful pillow for the weary head.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
5c5ac15
|
She was tremendously fond of Ralph. Not hounded by love the way some women were. With Crighton she had been teased endlessly by the idea of it, but with Ralph it was more straightforward. Again not love, more like the feelings you would have for a favorite dog (and, no, she would never have said such a thing to him. Some people, a lot of people, didn't understand how attached one could be to a dog.)
|
|
love
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
c05d6f5
|
How calm the house was. How deceptive that could be. One could lose everything in the blink of an eye, the slip of a foot. "One must avoid dark thoughts at all costs," she said to Ursula."
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
d420d43
|
Don't you wonder sometimes,' Ursula said. 'If just one small thing had been changed, in the past, I mean. If Hitler had died at birth, or if someone had kidnapped him as a baby and brought him up in--I don't know, say, a Quaker household--surely things would be different.
|
|
possibilities
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
147ee8f
|
He had taken a few days' leave from his army training and they had taken refuge in the Charing Cross Hotel while an unexploded bomb in the Strand was being dealt with. They could hear the naval guns that had been stationed on trolleys between Vauxhall and Waterloo--boom-boom-boom--but the bombers were looking for other targets and seemed to have moved on. 'Doesn't it ever stop?' Jimmy asked. 'Apparently not.' 'It's safer in the army,' he la..
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
f355fd4
|
Ursula tried to remember what her own last words to her father had been. A nonchalant 'See you later,' she concluded. The final irony. 'We never know when it will be the last time,' she said...
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
2a4b94d
|
Could you be an old maid if you had worn the scarlet letter?
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
c77b2e7
|
If Richard had lived, perhaps... but one cannot look backwards, only forwards. What has passed has passed for ever. What is it Heraclitus says? One Cannot step in the same river twice?' ... 'More or less. I suppose a more accurate way of putting it would be "You can step in the same river but the water will always be new."
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
db87afa
|
The past is what you take with you.
|
|
past
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
652727a
|
I am a jewel. I am a drop of blood. I am Ruby Lennox!
|
|
ruby-lennox
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
df87d2c
|
A man with an Irish accent could sound wise and poetic and interesting even when he wasn't.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
197f2fe
|
Viola felt as if she spent her life wading through a sea of ignorance, shallow but without a shore in sight.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
1f8e6fc
|
Civilizations rose and fell and in the end everything was dust and sand. Nothing beside remained. Hotels, maybe.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
28b1827
|
She had taken an almost instant dislike to him over a dinner at Nopi which, when the bill arrived, he had been more than happy to go Dutch on, thereby failing one of her first requirements of a suitor, which was to behave like a gentleman. She wanted doors opening, meals paid for, flowers. Billets-doux (lovely words, made her think of doves - bill and coo). She wanted to be courted. Gallantry. What a lovely word.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
e9e056f
|
Ah, I know," Bridget said. "For sure, you have the sixth sense." Mrs. Glover, wrestling with the plum pudding, snorted her disapproval. She was of the opinion that five senses were too many, let alone adding on another."
|
|
esp
senses
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
cd94cf4
|
How wonderfully, joyously, untrammeled he had been then in his happiness. She thought it was fixed for ever, she didn't realize that childhood happiness dissolves away. If she had realized that Archie wasn't going to be that sunny innocent child for ever she would have laid up every moment as treasure.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
b1341fa
|
They all chose Indian names for themselves. Teddy was Little Fox ("Naturally," Ursula said). Nancy was Little Wolf ("Honiahaka" in Cheyenne, Mrs. Shawcross said. She had a book she referred to). Mrs. Shawcross herself was Great White Eagle ("Oh, for heaven's sake," Sylvie said, "talk about hubris")." --
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
2c32e78
|
She...wanted no one--apart from men in nineteenth-century novels, which put a whole new spin on the idea of 'unattainable.
|
|
nineteenth-century
unattainable
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
9f8e3fb
|
The clock had been Sylvie's, and her mother's before that. It had gone to Ursula on Sylvie's death and Ursula had left it to Teddy, and so it had zigzagged its way down the family tree... ...The clock was a good one, made by Frodsham and worth quite a bit, but Teddy knew if he gave it to Viola she would sell it or misplace it or break it and it seemed important to him that it stayed in the family. An heirloom. ('Lovely word,' Bertie said.) ..
|
|
family
heirloom
red-string-of-fate
the-red-thread
kate-atkinson
generations
blood
|
Kate Atkinson |
|
cf8b992
|
words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.
|
|
|
Kate Atkinson |