Kate Atkinson · 400 pages
Rating: (30.2K votes)
“Oh, God. What was happening to her, she was turning into a normal person.”
“A coincidence is just an explanation waiting to happen”
“Just because something bad had happened to her doesn't mean it won't happen again.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“First things were good, last things not so much so.”
“A man with an Irish accent could sound wise and poetic and interesting even when he wasn’t.”
“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.”
“She didnt see the point of alcohol, or drugs. People had little enough control over their lives without losing more.”
“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.”
“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.”
“every increased possession loads us with weariness, and he’s right.” There”
“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.”
“Life’s random,” he said. “The best you can do is pick up the pieces.”
“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.”
“«I am tired,» he said. «I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever done. I pressed a button. It took the entire will power, the accumulated strength of my entire existence, to press one damned OFF button.»
«You have lived well,» the Alien said.”
“Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'taint easy.
--Penny Baxter to his son, Jody”
“I told people I was taking a gap year, but the truth was that I wanted to do nothing, absolutely nothing, for as long as possible, maybe for the rest of my life.”
“He closed the distance another tight inch. Her breasts pressed against his chest, and her nipples were hard little points stabbing out of the scarlet material, begging to be freed. Her breath came in ragged gasps, her perfume swamped his senses. He grew hard, and her eyes widened as his full length throbbed against her leg in demand.
“I’m calling your bluff, baby.”
Pure shock registered on her face as he removed one hand from the wall to casually unbutton his shirt, slide off his tie, then grasp her chin with a firm grip.
“Prove it.”
He stamped his mouth over hers, not giving her a chance to think or back off or push him away. He invaded her mouth, plunging his tongue inside the slick, silky cave, then closed his lips around the wet flesh and sucked hard.
She grabbed for his shoulders, and made a little moan deep in her throat.
Then she exploded.”
“Something about her suggested that her leisure activities included wrestling large woodland animals and banging bricks together.”
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