“ A common language was a wonderful idea, but utterly utopian. All good ideas were, she said sadly. Ursula Kate Atkinson
“ [She] went around with a beatific smile on her face that could be very irritating if you yourself weren't feeling beatific. Kate Atkinson
“ You don’t see the point of English literature?’ ‘I don’t see the point of studying it. Surely one just reads it? Kate Atkinson
“ Writing felt like something she knew, although she only knew it from the other side – reading – and it took her a while to realize that writing and reading were completely different activities – polar… Kate Atkinson
“ 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. Kate Atkinson
“ We're just cogs in a machine really, aren't we? Miss Fawcett said to her and Ursula said, But remember, without the cog there is no machine. Kate Atkinson
“ Viola hadn’t seen Sunny for nearly ten years and in the interim he had turned into a complete human being. (Perhaps the two things aren’t unrelated, Bertie said.) Kate Atkinson
“ This was their third bar since Piccadilly and they were both agreed that the two of them were very drunk but had the capacity to get a good deal drunker yet. Kate Atkinson
“ This Jackson bloke was the ruddy Scarlet Pimpernel, here, there and everywhere, always one step ahead of Barry. And everywhere he went, women were disappearing. Kate Atkinson
“ The wounds of war, Juliet thought, rather pleased with the way the words sounded in her head. It could be the title of a novel. Perhaps she should write one. But wasn’t artistic endeavor the final ref… Kate Atkinson
“ The toll of the dead had been her business during the war, the endless stream of figures that represented the blitzed and the bombed passed across her desk to be collated and recorded. They had seemed… Kate Atkinson
“ The plot thickens, he said, and wished he hadn’t said that because it sounded like something from a bad detective novel. I think we have a suspect. That didn’t sound much better. My house has just exp… Kate Atkinson
“ The mountain panorama was the backdrop to every photo taken here, the backdrop to everything. At first Ursula had thought it beautiful, now she was beginning to find its magnificence oppressive. The g… Kate Atkinson
“ The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories. Kate Atkinson
“ That was the problem with time travel, of course (apart from the impossibility) – one would always be a Cassandra, spreading doom with one’s foreknowledge of events. It was quite wearyingly relentless… Kate Atkinson
“ That was the problem with time travel, of course (apart from the impossibility) - one would always be a Cassandra, spreading doom with one's foreknowledge of events Kate Atkinson
“ Stella was one of Mr Bullock’s ‘chorus girls’ and confessed (readily) to being a ‘striptease artiste’ but Mr Armitage the opera singer said, We’re all artistes here, darling.What a bloody fairy that m… Kate Atkinson
“ Some people spend their whole lives looking for themselves, yet our self is the one thing we surely cannot lose (how like a cheap philosopher I am become, staying in this benighted place). From the mo… Kate Atkinson
“ Sister Michael turned and looked at him, and, despite her plump, jolly face, she had nuns’ eyes, and nuns’ eyes, Jackson knew, could see right inside your head, so he nodded respectfully at the statue… Kate Atkinson
