Quotes from Kate Atkinson

If hell did exist, which Jackson was sure it did, it would be governed by a committee of fifteen-year-old Italian boys on bikes.

he was not a person to whom things simply happened. His life had been lived in some kind of neutral gear, he had never broken a limb, never been stung by a bee, never been close to love or death. He had never strived for greatness, and his reward had been a small life.

Daddy said he would rather we were alive and cowards than dead and heroes.

Powerful men needed their women to be unchallenging, the home should not be an arena for intellectual debate.

I like this dog," he said, rubbing the dog's head. "He's a very straightforward kind of dog.

She thought of Dr Kellet and Pindar. Become such as you are, having learned what that is. She knew what that was now. She was Ursula Beresford Todd and she was a witness. She opened her arms to the black bat and they flew to each other, embracing the air like long-lost souls. This is love, Ursula thought. And the practice of it makes it perfect.

Spring forward, fall back, Eunice chants. Daylight saving -- what an amazing idea. (If only you could, but where would you keep it? With the time that's found? Or the time that's kept? A treasure chest, or a hole in the ground?) You're late, Eunice says. Better than never, I reply irritably.

dystopia, a reliably clean, well-lighted place.

He never imagined, when his daughter was small and infinitely, eternally lovable, that he would ever develop a combative relationship with her.

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

What does it matter what people do? At the end of the day we're all dead.

A woman in her sixth decade, dressed in everyday drab, is more invisible than a librarian.

Surprise?" she said when she eventually tracked him down. "It is," he said. They had hugged warily, as if one of them might have a knife.

What's life worth if you can't have some fun?

The war, Dr. Kellet said to Ursula, had made many people search for meaning in new places—"Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, anthroposophy, spiritualism. Everyone needs to make sense of their loss.

quoting Elizabeth I. Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested.

It was a relief to everyone, especially his wife, when, three years after he retired, he dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of an argument with a neighbor who had parked his car in front of their house.

Jackson had never had an allergy in his life (except to people, perhaps).

Betty and Shirley looked doubtfully at the pale figure of Edith in the stark hospital bed. She didn't look like someone who was intending to improve. They had expected tubes and fluids and other unpleasant things, but Edith was unadorned by anything medical and looked as though she was awaiting the embalmer.

who is to say which of these is real and which a fiction? In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.

It was then that Teddy realised that they were not so much warriors as sacrifices for the greater good. Birds thrown against a wall, in the hope that eventually, if there were enough birds, they would break that wall.

now Viola could see the value of sounding chirpy even when you didn't feel like it. You were more likely to get what you wanted, for one thing.

other. I managed to read one that said. 'What's a superego?' Written down, it looked very odd, like a sauce for spaghetti or a musical tempo mark – spiritoso, sforzando, superego. My headache was growing worse. I wished I had an Anadin (a rather poetic cry of pain). I was too tired to concentrate.

We're all primitives underneath, that's why we had to invent God, to be the voice of our conscience, or we would be killing each other left, right and centre.