Kate Atkinson · 400 pages
Rating: (30.2K votes)
“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?
“A second later, there was a knock on my door and a booming voice. 'Alexandria?'
Seth stilled above me, panting. 'You have got to be freaking kidding me.'
Leon knocked again. [...] 'Lucian is requesting your presence immediately.' Another gap of silence followed. 'He is also requesting to see you, Seth.'
Seth frowned as the gleam in his eyes faded. 'How in the world does he know I'm in here?'
'Leon...just knows.' I pushed at him weakly. 'Get off.'
'I was trying to.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, quote from Deity
“To begin with the old rigmarole of childhood. In a country there was a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room there was a bed, and in that bed there lay a little girl;”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, quote from Wives and Daughters
“Anyone who knows me well must understand and be sympathetic to my genuine need to be my own greatest hero. It is not a flaw of character; it is a catastrophe.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from The Lords of Discipline
“And the purple parted before it, snapping back like skin after a slash, and what it let out wasn't blood but light: amazing orange light that filled her heart and mind with a terrible mixture of joy, terror, and sorrow. No wonder she had repressed this memory all these years. It was too much. Far too much. The light seemed to give the fading air of evening a silken texture, and the cry of a bird struck her ear like a pebble made of glass. A cap of breeze filled her nostrils with a hundred exotic perfumes: frangipani, bougainvillea, dusty roses, and oh dear God, night-blooming cereus... And rising above one horizon came the orange mansion of the moon, bloated and burning cold, while the sun sank below the other, boiling in a crimson house of fire. She thought that mixture of furious light would kill her with its beauty.”
― Stephen King, quote from Lisey's Story
“I'm the top of the food chain and well...you're the food.”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from Dance with the Devil
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