373 Quotes by Kate Atkinson

Juliet felt slighted yet relieved. It was curious how you could hold two quite opposing feelings at the same time, an unsettling emotional discord. She felt an odd pang at the sight of him. She had been fond of him. She had been his girl. Reader, I didn’t marry him, she thought.

The war had been a tide that had receded and now here it was lapping around her ankles again.

Alternate history fascinates me, as it fascinates all novelists, because ‘What if?’ is the big thing.

Sometimes Teddy wondered if everyone had done well out of the war except for those who had fought in it.

Juliet and Hartley had long ago abandoned manners with each other. It was refreshing to behave without respect towards someone.

She seemed to have no inkling that life wasn’t as orderly as her pencil case and that everything is chance and at any moment any number of remarkable things can happen that are totally beyond our control, events that rip up our maps and re-polarize our compasses – the madwoman walking towards us, the train falling off the bridge, the boy on the bicycle.

When I’m writing, my neural pathways get blocked. I can’t read. I can barely hold a conversation without forgetting words and names. I wish I could wear the same clothes and eat the same food each day.

Ladies who lurch.

They’re definitely going to declare war tomorrow. In the morning. It’s probably timed so that the nation can get down on its collective knees in church and pray for deliverance.’ ‘Oh, yes, war is always so Christian, isn’t it?