Quotes from When Will There Be Good News?

“Oh, God. What was happening to her, she was turning into a normal person.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from When Will There Be Good News?

“A coincidence is just an explanation waiting to happen”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from When Will There Be Good News?

“Just because something bad had happened to her doesn't mean it won't happen again.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from When Will There Be Good News?

“It wasn't fair, he thought peevishly. "Who said life was fair?" his father had said to him a hundred times. He had said the same himself to his own daughter. ("It's not fair, Daddy.") Parents were miserable buggers. It SHOULD be fair. It should be paradise.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from When Will There Be Good News?

“Fine,’ she said, using the universal Scottish word for every state of being from ‘I’m dying in anguish’ to ‘I’m experiencing euphoric joy.’ ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’m fine.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from When Will There Be Good News?

“Louise was an urbanite, she preferred the gut-thrilling sound of an emergency siren slicing through the night to the noise of country birds at dawn. Pub brawls, rackety roadworks, mugged tourists, the badlands on a Saturday night - they all made sense, they were all part of the huge, dirty, torn social fabric. There was a war raging out there in the city and she was part of the fight, but the countryside unsettled her because she didn't know who the enemy was. She had always preferred North and South to Wuthering Heights. All that demented running around the moors, identifying yourself with the scenery, not a good role model for a woman.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from When Will There Be Good News?

“It was funny because she thought of herself as a good team player, although sometimes she suspected that no one else on her team did.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from When Will There Be Good News?

“First things were good, last things not so much so.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from When Will There Be Good News?

“A man with an Irish accent could sound wise and poetic and interesting even when he wasn’t.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from When Will There Be Good News?

“How wonderfully, joyously, untrammeled he had been then in his happiness. She thought it was fixed for ever, she didn't realize that childhood happiness dissolves away. If she had realized that Archie wasn't going to be that sunny innocent child for ever she would have laid up every moment as treasure.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from When Will There Be Good News?

“She didnt see the point of alcohol, or drugs. People had little enough control over their lives without losing more.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from When Will There Be Good News?

“Why make it easy when you could make it as difficult for yourself as possible? She was a woman, so, technically speaking, she could do anything.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from When Will There Be Good News?

“I don't actually live here," Reggie said.
"Who does live here then?"
"Ms. MacDonald, except that she doesn't because she's dead. Everyone's dead."
"I'm not," Jackson said. "You're not.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from When Will There Be Good News?

“every increased possession loads us with weariness, and he’s right.” There”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from When Will There Be Good News?

“Mum had worshipped Princess Di and frequently lamented her passing. “Gone,” she would say, shaking her head in disbelief. “Just like that. All that exercise for nothing.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from When Will There Be Good News?

“Life’s random,” he said. “The best you can do is pick up the pieces.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from When Will There Be Good News?

“Love. Love wasn’t sweet and light, it was visceral and overpowering. Love wasn’t patient, love wasn’t kind. Love was ferocious, love knew how to play dirty.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from When Will There Be Good News?

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“serious cash to free April? And there was no word yet from the kidnapper. Usually, as Theo remembered from television, the family gets word pretty soon that the bad guys have the child and would like a million bucks or so for a safe return. Another report from the morning news showed Mrs. Finnemore crying in front of their home. The police were tight-lipped, saying only that they were pursuing all leads. A neighbor said his dog started barking around midnight, always a bad sign. As frantic as the reporters seemed to be that morning, the truth was that they were finding very little to add to the story of a missing girl. Theo’s homeroom teacher was Mr. Mount, who also taught Government. After Mr. Mount got the boys settled, he called the roll. All sixteen were present. The conversation quickly got around to the disappearance of April, and Mr. Mount asked Theo if he’d heard anything. “Nothing,” Theo said, and his classmates seemed disappointed.”
― John Grisham, quote from The Abduction

“I recall thinking that I was stroking toward either the end of all life or the beginning of a new one. Neither possibility stirred me. Every man knows he will die; and nobody believes it. On that paradox stand not only a host of religions but the entity of sane being. I wasn't able to credit my own non-existence any better than the next man; what I had lost was a healthy abhorrence of the state. It had not dropped from me because of any particular shock or misfortune. It had moulted from me year by year, for all of my thirty-five, to leave me naked in apathy.”
― John Myers Myers, quote from Silverlock

“There was no feeling of dedication because it was absolutely involuntary. I do not doubt that if the Marines had asked for volunteers for an impossible campaign such as Guadalcanal, almost everyone now fighting would have stepped forward. But that is sacrifice; that is voluntary. Being expended robs you of the exultation, the self-abnegation, the absolute freedom of self-sacrifice. Being puts one in the role of victim rather than sacrificer, and there is always something begrudging in this. I doubt if Isaac would have accepted the knife of his father, Abraham, entirely without reproach; yet, for the same master, he would have gladly gone to his death a thousand times. The world is full of the sacrifice of heroes and martyrs, but there was only one Victim.”
― Robert Leckie, quote from Helmet for My Pillow

“If you really love someone you shouldn’t have to think about anything. You should want to say it. It’s not difficult.”
― Katie Klein, quote from Cross My Heart

“I take it back! she'd wanted to say . I take everything back. I love you. Let's go away. Just the two of us together.”
― Melissa de la Cruz, quote from Keys to the Repository

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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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