“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 moment we are conceived it is the pattern in our blood and our bones are printed through with it like sticks of seaside rock. Nora, on the other hand, says that she’s surprised anyone knows who they are, considering that every cell and molecule in our bodies has been replaced many times over since we were born.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Emotionally Weird
“I can't help but think that it's an unfortunate custom to name children after people who come to sticky ends. Even if they are fictional characters, it doesn't bode well for the poor things. There are too many Judes and Tesses and Clarissas and Cordelias around. If we must name our children after literary figures then we should search out happy ones, although it's true they are much harder to find.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Emotionally Weird
“I was on the verge of something numinous and profound and in one more second the universe was going to crack open and arcana would rain down on my head like grace and all the cosmic mysteries were going to be revealed.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Emotionally Weird
“Perhaps we are on an insula ex machina, an artificial place not in the real world at all -- a backdrop for the stories we must tell.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Emotionally Weird
“I was distracted suddenly from these pleasant thoughts by noticing that, like the eyes in certain portraits, Heather’s nipples seemed to have the uncanny ability to follow you around the room. This is the kind of observation that once made, cannot be unmade. Unfortunately.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Emotionally Weird
“Personally, I don’t think it right to make up things about real people—although I suppose there’s an argument for saying that once you’re dead you’re not real any more. But then we have to define what we mean by real and none of us wants to go down that tortuous path because we all know where it leads (madness or a first-class honours, or both).”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Emotionally Weird
“Duke was a burly, barrel-shaped Rottweiler made up of muscle and solid fat and built like a wrestler, a dog that looked like it was permanently on the verge of dying of boredom. He shook his weighty head as if he was being plagued by ear-mites and dislodged a scatter of small romantic words like a broken rope of pearls.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Emotionally Weird
“I think we should begin with a little exercise to flex our writing muscles,’ Martha said, speaking very slowly as if she was on prescription drugs but I think it was just her way of trying to communicate with people less intelligent than she thought she was.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Emotionally Weird
“A lone fisherman up early looking for sea trout found the first body.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Emotionally Weird
“Nor, says Nora, do we want commonplace tales of hausfrau Angst, of the woman heroically making over her life with a handsome new lover, a beautiful child, a happy ending. Instead, we shall have murder and mayhem, plots and sub-plots, a mad woman in the attic, purloined diamonds, lost birthrights, heroic dogs, a soupçon of sex, a suspicion of philosophy.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Emotionally Weird
“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.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Emotionally Weird
“Terri would have made the perfect wife for Bob – they could have simply slept their way through married life. Rip van Winkle and Duchess Anaesthesia, the lost, sleepy daughter of the Romanovs.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Emotionally Weird
Kate Atkinson
Born place: in York, England, The United Kingdom
Born date January 1, 1951
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“I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.”
― quote from Holy Bible: The New King James Version
“…..in that blurred state between awake and asleep when too many intake valves are open in the soul. Like the terrestial crust of the earth which is proportionately 10 times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul is a miracle of mutual pressures. Millions of kilograms of force pounding up from earth’s core on the inside to meet the cold air of the world and stop as we do, just in time.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red
“Diamond Skinner had had no material possessions to his name and yet had been the happiest creature Lou had ever met. He and God would no doubt get along famously.”
― David Baldacci, quote from Wish You Well
“Sólo el individuo que vive en soledad es una criatura sujeta a leyes profundas y si sale al empezar la mañana, o mira hacia la tarde que está vibrante de vida y comprende lo que le rodea, entonces todo se desprende de él, como si de un cadáver se tratara, aunque siga en la plenitud de la vida.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
“Scuffing her bare feet into slippers, she shrugged into a silk robe, then hesitated, looking down at Perrin. He would be able to see her clearly, if he woke, but to her, he was just a shadowed mound. She wished her mother were there, now, to advise her. She loved Perrin with every fiber of her being, and he confused every fiber. Actually understanding men was impossible, of course, but he was so unlike anyone she had grown up with. He never swaggered, and instead of laughing at himself, he was... modest. She had not believed a man could be modest! He insisted that only chance had made him a leader, claimed he did not know how to lead, when men who met him were ready to follow after an hour. He dismissed his own thinking as slow, when those slow, considering thoughts saw so deeply that she had to dance a merry jig to keep any secrets at all. He was a wonderful man, her curly-haired wolf. So strong. And so gentle.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from The Path of Daggers
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Keep the Aspidistra...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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