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c524c29
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Dr. Kellet said, "it's a snake with its tail in its mouth." He nodded approvingly and said to Sylvie, "It's a symbol representing the circularity of the universe. Time is a construct, in reality everything flows, no past or present, only the now."
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Kate Atkinson |
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9853e9a
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When Lillian left work in the early evening the streets were slick and shiny with rain and the lamps flared yellow giving her the melancholy feeling that always came with the rain and the dark. She'd just struggled to push up her umbrella when the farmer from Saskatchewan came out of the shadows and tipped his hat again, very politely, and said could he escort her home? She put her small hand on his broad arm and held the umbrella over both..
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Kate Atkinson |
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142096e
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Maths was "the one true thing," according to Nancy.
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love
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Kate Atkinson |
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e7a764a
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Viola was a good reader, a bookworm--a phrase she hated. "How can a worm be a nice thing to be?" Viola said. I would be a worm, Nancy thought, if that was the only existence on offer, and then laughed at herself for having reached such a pass. "Without worms we wouldn't be able to grow food and everyone would starve," Nancy said reasonably."
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Kate Atkinson |
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1ed1252
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Mrs. Appleyard, in contrast, was thin and sallow and when her husband was out of the apartment Ursula could hear her singing mournfully to herself in a language that she couldn't place. Something Eastern European by the sound of it. How useful Mr. Carver's Esperanto would be, she thought. (Only if everyone spoke it, of course.) And especially these days with so many refugees flooding into London.
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Kate Atkinson |
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5bf4936
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The more Viola forgot her mother, the more she missed her.
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Kate Atkinson |
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e0ed3d6
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This Henry lived in Edinburgh, making him inaccessible and giving her something to do on the weekends -- 'Oh, just flying up to Scotland, Henry's taking me fishing,' which is the kind of thing she imagined people doing in Scotland -- she always thought of the Queen Mother, incongruous in mackintosh and waders, standing in the middle of a shallow brown river (somewhere on the outskirts of Brigadoon, no doubt) and casting a line for trout.
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humor
queen-mother
scotland
royal-family
satire
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Kate Atkinson |
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49700f1
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How many times would he disappoint you in a day if you were married to him? Ursula wondered. It seemed to her that in the search for arguments against marriage the existence of Maurice presented the very best one of all.
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Kate Atkinson |
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8874d73
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Fanning Court. God forbid. Teddy could no longer sit in the chair. He could no longer leave the bed, no longer do anything. He was approaching the end of his twilight, entering into the final darkness. Viola imagined the synapses in her father's brain flaring and dimming like the slow death of a star. Soon Teddy would burn out completely and implode and become a black hole. Viola was hazy on the subject of astrophysics, but she liked the im..
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Kate Atkinson |
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01141b8
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One of the remarkable things about Life After Life is the way that this formal experimentation is combined with a consistently involving plot. It is as if the writing of B. S. Johnson had been crossed with the better novels of Anthony Trollope. An entire world emerges but shows itself again and again in different lights. It's an unusual book in many ways: in part a tribute to England and to the resilience of the English character revealed u..
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Kate Atkinson |
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3b38555
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There was now and it was followed by another now. If you were lucky.
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Kate Atkinson |
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6bb40cd
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She had one of those husky voices that sounded as if she were permanently coming down with a cold. Men seemed to find that sexy in a woman, which Jackson thought was odd because it made women sound less like women and more like men. Maybe it was a gay thing.
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men
women
humor
husky-voice
sexy
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Kate Atkinson |
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d4ed8c1
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Teddy shuddered. The idea of the sublime little bird being plucked from the sky, of its exquisite song being interrupted in full flight, was horrible to him.
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metaphor
killing
death
senseless-death
skylark
waste
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Kate Atkinson |
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a96e9ec
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There was a strangeness in the shimmering air, a sense of imminence that made Ursula's chest feel full, as if her heart was growing. It was a kind of high holiness--she could think of no other way of describing it. Perhaps it was the future, she thought, coming nearer all the time.
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Kate Atkinson |
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395c236
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A similar obligatory likeness of George adorned Mrs Glover's bedside table. Trussed in uniform and uncomfortable before a studio backdrop that reminded Sylvie of the Amalfi coast, George Glover no longer resembled a Sistine Adam. Sylvie thought of all the enlisted men who had already undergone the same ritual, a keepsake for mothers and sweethearts, the only photograph that would ever be taken of some of them. 'He could be killed,' Bridget ..
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Kate Atkinson |
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be0587b
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eye for an eye," Mac said at the squadron reunion. Until everyone was blind, Teddy wondered?)" --
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Kate Atkinson |
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41c0a7f
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she didn't see the point of alcohol, or drugs. People had little enough control over their lives without losing more.
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Kate Atkinson |
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5b1fc98
|
Oh, how he missed his sister. Out of everyone, the legions of the dead, the numberless infinities of souls who had gone before, it was the loss of Ursula that had left him with the sorest heart.
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Kate Atkinson |
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e429f9f
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Bridget wouldn't let Trixie come to Mrs. Dodds's house, she said she would never hear the end of it. "She doesn't believe in dogs," Bridget said. "Dogs are hardly an article of faith," Sylvie said."
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Kate Atkinson |
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1cd09aa
|
Whatever happens to you, embrace it, the good and the bad equally.
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Kate Atkinson |
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f0dd018
|
I think we should begin with a little exercise to flex our writing muscles,' Martha said, speaking very slowly as if she was on prescription drugs but I think it was just her way of trying to communicate with people less intelligent than she thought she was.
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Kate Atkinson |
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fd7ef1c
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He has been reconciled to death during the war and then suddenly the war was over and there was a next day and a next day and a next day. Part of him never adjusted to having a future.
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Kate Atkinson |
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2a406f7
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She was twenty-eight but already jaded. Twenty-eight seemed a particularly unsatisfactory age. She was no longer young and yet no one ever seemed to take her seriously as an adult. People still told her what to do all the time, it was infuriating. Her only power seemed to be over her own children and even that was limited by endless negotiation.
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Kate Atkinson |
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f898252
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If it hadn't been for this chance hospital encounter, accidental in all senses, Victor might never have courted a girl. He already felt well on his way to middle age, and his social life was still limited to the chess club. Victor didn't really feel the need for another person in his life, in fact he found the concept of "sharing" a life bizarre. He had mathematics, which filled up his time almost completely, so he wasn't entirely sure what..
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Kate Atkinson |
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1650ad8
|
he had a firm voice, a nice low register that spoke of both kindness and unassailable authority, which seemed the perfect combination in a man--in the romance novels her mother had been fond of, anyway
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Kate Atkinson |
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d9f827c
|
She] went around with a beatific smile on her face that could be very irritating if you yourself weren't feeling beatific.
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Kate Atkinson |
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31f03ee
|
It was the war, Juliet thought, remembering the photograph of the flamingo's creased wife, it has made refugees of us all.
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Kate Atkinson |
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41b8d8a
|
Juliet sighed and wondered if one day she would think herself to death. Was that possible? And would it be painful?
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Kate Atkinson |
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8d767e4
|
Being flippant was harder work than being earnest
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Kate Atkinson |
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9a1a9d5
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misquote Edmund Burke rather than Milton. All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good women to do nothing.
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Kate Atkinson |
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11af51b
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In Teddy's experience people who claimed to be one thing were generally the opposite,
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Kate Atkinson |
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a43bb77
|
Bridget wiped her tears vigorously on her apron and said, "Must get on with the tea."
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Kate Atkinson |
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a2640d8
|
We're all Bolsheviks now," Izzie said blithely. "And at my table!" Hugh said and laughed."
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Kate Atkinson |
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7754594
|
I have seen a large dog fox several times recently but it was a hot afternoon and no doubt, like most creatures, it was lying low in the shade. The fox has an unfortunate reputation. A crafty thief, often a charming one in fable and fairy story, its name is a byword for low (and occasionally high) cunning. A moral outlaw, a trickster and sometimes downright malevolent. The Christian Church often equated the fox with the devil. In many churc..
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Kate Atkinson |
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e0a6c86
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Mr. Carver hadn't been such a bad sort really. He had been very keen on Esperanto, which had seemed an absurd eccentricity at the time but now Ursula thought it might be a good thing to have a universal language, as Latin had once been. Oh, yes, Miss Woolf said, a common language was a wonderful idea, but utterly utopian. All good ideas were, she said sadly.
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Kate Atkinson |
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b79a48f
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She didnt see the point of alcohol, or drugs. People had little enough control over their lives without losing more.
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Kate Atkinson |
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a3fa34d
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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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218bd80
|
Home', it had struck her on the torturous drive back to London, wasn't Egerton Gardens, wasn't even Fox Corner. Home was an idea, and like Arcadia it was lost in the past.
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Kate Atkinson |
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cd3ccf0
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That was how you lost people, a little carelessness and they just slipped through your fingers.
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Kate Atkinson |
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d175c97
|
After that Sylvie made sure they all went to the swimming baths in town and took lessons, from an ex-major in the Boer War who barked orders at them until they were too frightened to sink.
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Kate Atkinson |
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9a35211
|
In the endgame a pawn can change into a queen.
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Kate Atkinson |
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fcdab53
|
Pamela produced placid babies. "They don't tend to turn feral until they're two," she said."
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humor
children
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Kate Atkinson |
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8cd544e
|
she said science had made the world a worse place, that it was all about men inventing new ways to kill people.
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Kate Atkinson |
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ec5bbd0
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And, of course, philosophy attracted exactly the wrong kind of girls for Bob - earnest intellectual ones, for example, who wanted to discuss Foucault and Adorno and other people Bob had tried very hard not to hear of. If Bob could have designed a girl he would have started by getting rid of her vocal cords.
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Kate Atkinson |