Kate Atkinson > Quotes

“She should have done science, not spent all her time with her head in novels. Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.”
― Kate Atkinson, Case Histories

“Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness, a conundrum that she couldn’t even begin to solve.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“Why do cats sleep so much? Perhaps they've been trusted with some major cosmic task, an essential law of physics - such as: if there are less than 5 million cats sleeping at any one time the world will stop spinning. So that when you look at them and think, "what a lazy, good-for-nothing animal," they are, in fact, working very, very hard.”
― 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?”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories.”
― Kate Atkinson, Human Croquet

“I feel as if I’m waiting for something dreadful to happen, and then I realize it already has.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“Life wasn't about becoming, was it? It was about being.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“He was born a politician.
No, Ursula thought, he was born a baby, like everyone else. And this is what he has chosen to become.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“It was a long time ago now. And it was yesterday.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“No point in thinking, you just have to get on with life. We only have one after all, we should try and do our best. We can never get it right, but we must try.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“Sometimes,' Sylvie said, 'one can mistake gratitude for love.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“She had never been without a book for as long as she could remember. An only child never is.”
― Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins

“They said love made you strong, but in Louise's opinion it made you weak. It corkscrewed into your heart and you couldn't get it out again, not without ripping your heart to pieces.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“Sometimes it was harder to change the past than it was the future.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“Do not equate nationalism with patriotism... Nationalism is the first step on the road to Fascism.”
― Kate Atkinson, Transcription

“Most people muddled through events and only in retrospect realized their significance.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“Sylvie’s knowledge, like Izzie's, was random yet far-ranging, ‘The sign that one has acquired one’s learning from reading novels rather than an education…”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“She doesn't believe in dogs," Bridget said.
"Dogs are hardly an article of faith," Sylvie said.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“Become such as you are, having learned what that is.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“We cannot turn away,” Miss Woolf told her, “we must get on with our job and we must bear witness.” What did that mean, Ursula wondered. “It means,” Miss Woolf said, “that we must remember these people when we are safely in the future.”
“And if we are killed?”
“Then others must remember us.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“Literature had fuelled her childhood fantasies and convinced her that one day she would be the heroine of her own narrative.”
― Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins

“You must never believe everything they say about a person. Generally speaking, most of it will be lies, half-truths at best.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“Love was the hardest thing. Don't let anyone ever tell you different.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“Moments left, Teddy thought. A handful of heartbeats. That was what life was. A heartbeat followed by a heartbeat. A breath followed by a breath. One moment followed by another moment and then there was a last moment.”
― Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins

“Why is everything an 'adventure' with you?" Sylvie said irritably to Izzie."

"Because life is an adventure, of course."

"I would say it was more of an endurance race," Sylvie said. "Or an obstacle course.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“It wasn't that [he] believed in religion, or a God, or an afterlife. He just knew it was impossible to feel this much love and for it to end.”
― Kate Atkinson, Case Histories

“I have been to the world's end and back and now I know what I would put in my bottom drawer. I would put my sisters.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“Oh, God. What was happening to her, she was turning into a normal person.”
― Kate Atkinson, When Will There Be Good News?