Quotes from Kate Atkinson

The convent smelled like every Catholic church Jackson had ever been inside—an excess of incense and Mansion House polish.

She made 'pig' sound like a much worse word than it was. Pigs were quite nice.

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 most of the residents of Poplar Hill, who were either dying or demented or both. It was called a "care home" but there was precious little of either to be had when you were run by a profit-based health-care provider employing minimum-wage staff.

of course, i don´t believe in god; Dr Kellet said. but i believe in heaven. one has to.

But when you split someone's head open it smelled like an abattoir and quite overpowered the scent of the wild lilacs you'd cut and brought into the house only this morning, which was already in another life.

Her éducation sexuelle (it was easier to think of it as something French) was woefully riddled with lacunae.

And when all else is gone, Art remains.

Life was for absorbing, not recording. And in the end, it was all just paper that someone would have to dispose of after you were gone. Perhaps, after all, one's purpose in this world was to be forgotten, not remembered

He had seemed fierce and noble but in the end he was as disappointing as everyone else.

Perhaps his son was right. Perhaps the past was no longer the context for the present. Perhaps none of it mattered anymore. Was this how the world would end—not with a bang but a So?

The last thing she wanted was people looking for her. No, that wasn't true--the last thing she wanted was people finding her.

In the prosperous household of Sylvie's childhood, Cook was called 'Cook' but Mrs Glover preferred 'Mrs Glover'. It made her irreplaceable. Sylvie still stubbornly referred to her as Cook.

but nonetheless once you hit fifty there was no escaping the fact that you had a one-way ticket on a nonstop service to the terminus.

a birthmark the shape of Africa.

Ursula missed the sound of church bells. There were so many simple things she had taken for granted before the war. She wished that she could go back and appreciate them properly.

A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury," she

Home was an idea, and like Arcadia it was lost in the past. She

by reading book after book (the only reliable otherworlds I've discovered so far).

Who wrote that? Kitty had

But wasn't artistic endeavor the final refuge of the uncommitted?

anthroposophy, spiritualism. Everyone needs to make sense

And together they had committed a hideous act, the kind of thing that binds you to someone forever, whether you like it or not.

The coat was forties-style, made from Canadian beaver at a time when people didn't think about whether or not it was wrong to wear fur. Although Gloria would no longer wish to wear the skin of another animal on top of her own, the way she looked at it now, the beavers were already long dead and had lived the happy, uncomplicated life of Canadian beavers before the war.

every increased possession loads us with weariness, and he's right." There