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Hindsight's a wonderful thing. If we all had it there would be no history to write about.

Kate Atkinson

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Kate Atkinson
Age: 72
Born: 1951
Born: December 20
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Writer
Jórvík
Writing
Thing
Would
Hindsight
Wonderful
History
Write

More quotes by Kate Atkinson

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Feminism is such an incredibly awkward word for us these days, isnt it? Not to be feminist would be bizarre, wouldnt it?
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If you don't have a unique voice, then you're not really a writer.
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Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness, a conundrum that she couldn’t even begin to solve.
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She was a terrible mother, there was no doubt about it, but she didn't even have the strength to feel guilty.
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I spent four years doing a doctorate in postmodern American literature. I can recognize it when I see it.
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The past is what you take with you.
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I did feel when my mother died if anyone was going to haunt me it would be her. And she hasn't, so I think it is possibly the end.
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Men had no purpose on earth whereas women were gods walking unrecognized among them.
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Fairy tales opened up a door into my imagination - they don't conform to the reality that's around you as a child. I started reading when I was three and read everything, but I wanted to be an actress.
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I don't have goals when writing books, apart from getting to the end. I have rather vague ideas about how I want things to feel, I'm big on ambience. I have a title, a beginning and a probable ending and go from there.
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Certainly I had a really terrible time with 'Emotionally Weird.' When I finished it, I thought, 'I can't write any more.
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Patricia embraces me on the station platform. 'The past is what you leave behind in life, Ruby,' she says with the smile of a reincarnated lama. 'Nonsense, Patricia,' I tell her as I climb on board my train. 'The past's what you take with you.
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Alternate history fascinates me, as it fascinates all novelists, because 'What if?' is the big thing.
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He was born a politician. No, Ursula thought, he was born a baby, like everyone else. And this is what he has chosen to become.
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(although anyone with half a brain must surely be mired in existential gloom all the time)
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She doesn't believe in dogs, Bridget said. Dogs are hardly an article of faith, Sylvie said.
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You can step in the same river but the water will always be new.
Kate Atkinson
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Sometimes,' Sylvie said, 'one can mistake gratitude for love.
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I had a novel in the back of my mind when I won an Ian St James story competition in 1993. At the award ceremony an agent asked me if I was writing a novel. I showed her four or five chapters of what would become 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' and to my surprise she auctioned them off.
Kate Atkinson
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I'm a lapsed Quaker. I don't go to meetings any more. But I'm very drawn to Catholicism - all that glitter. I'd love to be a Catholic. I think it would be fantastic - faith, forgiveness, absolution, extreme unction - all these wonderful words. I don't think anyone who was ever born a Catholic hasn't died a Catholic, no matter how lapsed they are.
Kate Atkinson