Quotes from Kate Atkinson

a common language was a wonderful idea, but utterly utopian. All good ideas were, she said sadly. Ursula

These were ideal conditions for the creation of his magnum opus, and Ramsay was hammering on the Remington's keys and shuttling its carriage with abandon, fuelled by nothing more than Lipton's tea and a tin of cocaine throat pastilles that he'd cadged off one of the dancers at the Sphinx.

It was the kind of love (lust, to be honest about it) that survivors of disasters must practise – or people who are anticipating disaster – free of all restraint, savage at times and yet strangely tender and affectionate.

It had nothing in common with what he and Margaret did in bed, where he always felt he was imposing an indignity on her and she was trying to pretend he wasn't.

How useful Mr. Carver's Esperanto would be, she thought. (Only if everyone spoke it, of course.)

The world inside his head was so much better than the world outside his head.

I had an idea of him,' Ursula said, 'but the idea wasn't him. Perhaps I wanted to fall in love.

Why not?" Mrs. Scaife said, navigating her way back to the sofa and dropping anchor ("Ouf") on the salmon damask.

You're trying to shore up a civilization that's in its death throes," Hugh said, as casually as if he were remarking on the weather. "There's really no point.

She could understand why someone might want to kill a queue jumper. If it had been up to her she would have summarily executed a great many people by now—people who dropped litter in the street, for example, they would certainly think twice about the discarded sweet wrapper if it resulted in being strung up from the nearest lamppost.

L'Air du Temps

Of course, the Führer promised a lot of things. It was what had got him where he was today.

although, of course, you couldn't be sure—it might be that cloistered women praying night and day was the only thing that was preventing some cataclysmal disaster—a meteor or global nuclear meltdown.

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?

Gloria didn't believe in heaven, although she did occasionally worry that it was a place that existed only if you did believe in it. She wondered if people would be so keen on the idea of the next life if it was, say, underground. Or full of people like Pam. And relentlessly, tediously boring, like an everlasting Baptist service but without the occasional excitement of a full immersion.

She had married him in order to be safe from the chaos. He had married her, she now understood, for the same reason. They were the last two people on earth who could make anyone safe from anything.

Her past already seemed an antiquated curiosity—a virtual space re-created by the museum of the future.

This is Martin Canning, Neil. He's written a wonderful book." "Fantastic," Neil Winters said, shaking Martin's hand. His hand was damp and soft and made Martin think of something dead you might pick up on the beach. "The first of many, I

I don't understand." "Well, when you arrived at St. George's you wouldn't stop screaming. They thought something terrible must have happened to you." "This isn't St. George's, is it?" "No," he said kindly. "This is a private clinic. Rest, good food and so on. They have lovely gardens. I always think a lovely garden helps, don't you?

Gloria hesitated to imagine what kind of emergency might take place in the bedroom that would require her to hit a panic button. Graham wanting sex, maybe.

Archie was talking. Nothing will stop Archie talking, not even death probably, he will rumble on from the inside of his large coffin until the worms get fed up with the noise and eat his tongue –

If she imagined God at all, it was as a vague entity that hung around behind her left shoulder, rather like a nagging parrot.

Notes of the 'Remember to' variety that the owner must have written to herself. Miss Matilda

Because you couldn't make time, she'd been deluded about that. Time was a thief, he stole your life away from you and the only way you could get it back was to outwit him and snatch it right back.