She was a terrible mother, there was no doubt about it, but she didn't even have the strength to feel guilty. — Kate Atkinson Copy Share Image
I did feel when my mother died if anyone was going to haunt me it would be her. And she hasn't, so… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share Image
If they would all sleep all the time she wouldn't mind being their mother. — Kate Atkinson Copy Share Image
“Ursula tried to remember what her own last words to her father had been. A nonchalant 'See you later,' she concluded. The… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share Image
“Kittens were in continual abundance on the farm, there was a kind of kitten currency in the neighborhood, they were bartered for… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share Image
My father was an autodidact. It wasn't a middle-class house. Shopkeepers are aspirant. He paid for me to go to private school.… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share Image
I was an only child and grew up in York where my parents ran a surgical supplies shop. When I say I… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share Image
“It wasn't fair, he thought peevishly. "Who said life was fair?" his father had said to him a hundred times. He had… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share Image
“Winter dark, five o'clock in the morning by the little gold carriage clock on the bedroom mantelpiece. The clock, an English one… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share Image
“The roof of the big top was dark blue, spangled with silver stars, and it reminded him of something but he couldn't… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share Image
“She had had affairs over the years ... but she had never been pregnant, never been a mother or a wife and… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share Image
“Sweet sixteen," Hugh said, kissing her affectionately. "Happy birthday, little bear. Your future's all ahead of you." Ursula still harbored the feeling that some… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share
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… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share
“He had made a vow, a private promise to the world in the long dark watches of the night, that if he did survive… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share
“When she was little they had lived in an old farmhouse too, in the middle of nothing of but landscape.” — Kate Atkinson Copy Share
“Do you keep time in the same place that you save it? If so why is it always so difficult to find? It must… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share
I was on the verge of something numinous and profound and in one more second the universe was going to crack open and arcana… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share
I feel as if I’m waiting for something dreadful to happen, and then I realize it already has. — Kate Atkinson Copy Share
“If she had been in charge of designing the human race she would have gone about things differently. (A golden shaft of light through… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share
The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories. — Kate Atkinson Copy Share
I don't want to spoil the magic, but it's a very curious thing that honestly baffles me. It's the nearest we'll ever get to… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share
“What did science ever do for the world, apart from make better ways of killing people?” Sylvie said.” — Kate Atkinson Copy Share
Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing,… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share
“she could see Sylvie and her friends on the lawn below, their dresses fluttering like moths in the encroaching dusk.” — Kate Atkinson Copy Share
“misquote Edmund Burke rather than Milton. All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good… — Kate Atkinson Copy Share
