Quotes from Kate Atkinson

What if we had a chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right? Wouldn't that be wonderful?

It's funny, isn't it, Miss Woolf whispered in Ursula's ear, how much German music we listen to. Great beauty transcends all. Perhaps after the war it will heal all too.

There were so many facts that Amelia no longer felt certain about (or perhaps she had never known them). She would soon be nearer fifty than forty, and she was sure that every day she could feel more neural pathways disappearing—fusing and arcing and dying—leaving her unable to retrieve information.

What do you think you're doing?" she asked when Jackson took his own phone out of his pocket. Another chippy woman, Jackson thought with a sigh. Chippy women wherever he went. Chippy mothers who begat chippy daughters and so the circle of chippiness was unbroken.

Boxes within boxes, dolls within dolls, worlds within worlds. Everything was connected. Everything in the whole world.

but her mother's death had revealed that there was no metaphor too ostentatious for grief. It was a terrible thing and demanded embellishment.

It turned out that love was everything after all 

Why did people understand how precious each day was only once the doors to the grave had opened and they had looked inside? What was the point of that?

One of the things Jackson liked about Julia was her independence, one of the things he didn't like about Julia was her independence.

A fool too late bewares when all the peril is past.

I run to death, and death meets me as fast, And all my pleasures are like yesterday.

They have no sense of humour whatsoever – even Bunty has a sense of humour compared with our hosts. They have united Prussian gloom and Presbyterian dourness in an awesome combination.

Really she was just like everyone else, she wanted to love someone. Even better if they loved you in return. She was considering getting a cat. She didn't really like cats though. That might be a bit of a problem. Quite liked dogs.

There were doorways between this world and the next, she said, but only certain people could pass through them.

The kid looked up from her wampum and stared inscrutably at her and then, for the first time since Tracy bought her, Courtney smiled. A beatific sunbeam of a smile. Tracy beamed back, a bubble-burst of mixed emotion – ecstasy and agony in equal, confusing measure inside her – rising in her chest. Jesus. How did parents manage with this kind of stuff on a daily basis? She found herself blinking back tears.

he had stayed...because something told him that this was the life that had to be lived out.

Sometimes Jackson thought that the past wasn't just another country, it was a lost continent somewhere at the bottom of an unknown ocean.

Wronged wives were a law unto themselves.

but it seemed so much worse somehow when he turned out to have golden curls like an angel and eyes the colour of forget-me-nots.

Ursula found it very odd to think that up above them there were German bombers being flown by men who, essentially, were just like Teddy. They weren't evil, they were just doing what had been asked of them by their country. It was war itself that was evil, not men. Although she would make an exception for Hitler.

Sometimes you wondered why anyone bothered crawling out of the cradle when what lay ahead was so darn difficult.

The war had been a tide that had receded and now here it was lapping around her ankles again.

No one ever warned you about how ferocious mother love could be, let's face it, no one warned you about anything.

but how could you spoil a child—by neglect, yes, but not by love. You had to give them all the love you could, even though giving that much love could cause you pain and anguish and horror and, in the end, love could destroy you.