373 Quotes by Kate Atkinson

Sylvia loved secrets and even if she didn’t have any secrets she made sure that you thought she did. Amelia had no secrets, Amelia knew nothing. When she grew up she planned to know everything and to keep it all a secret.

Life is too precious to be unhappy.’ Ursula wondered how many people across London were saying the same thing that night. Perhaps in less salubrious surroundings. And there would be others, of course, who would be saying the same words to cleave to what they already had, not to discard it on a whim. Suddenly.

When you chopped logs with the ax and they split open they smelled beautiful, like Christmas. But when you split someone’s head open it smelled like abattoir and quite overpowered the scent of the wild lilacs you’d cut and brought into the house only this morning, which was already another life.

Pamela produced placid babies. “They don’t tend to turn feral until they’re two,” she said.

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.

There were many things Viola could have said at this point. She had thought of all of them while gazing at the forest, the sacred river, the birds, ‘I’m sorry’ being foremost, but instead she told him about the dream. ‘And then you turned to me and you were smiling and you said, “We did it, Mum! Everyone got on the train.”’ ‘I don’t think it was about the train.’ ‘No,’ Viola agreed. ‘It was how I felt when you spoke to me.’ ‘Which was?’ ‘Overwhelmed by love. For you.’ Oh, Viola. At last. Bertie.

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.

I find the past so fascinating. Photographs are strange, almost surreal, almost here yet gone. I slip into thinking what the past must have been like and I enjoy creating that ambience and atmosphere – 1730 to around 1870 is the most interesting period.

Being flippant was harder work than being earnest.