Quote

Alternate history fascinates me, as it fascinates all novelists, because 'What if?' is the big thing.

Kate Atkinson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Kate Atkinson
Age: 72
Born: 1951
Born: December 20
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Writer
Jórvík
Alternate
Novelists
Bigs
History
Thing
Fascinates

More quotes by Kate Atkinson

Image
Men had no purpose on earth whereas women were gods walking unrecognized among them.
Kate Atkinson
Image
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.
Kate Atkinson
Image
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
Image
Certainly I had a really terrible time with 'Emotionally Weird.' When I finished it, I thought, 'I can't write any more.
Kate Atkinson
Image
You must never believe everything they say about a person. Generally speaking, most of it will be lies, half-truths at best.
Kate Atkinson
Image
She doesn't believe in dogs, Bridget said. Dogs are hardly an article of faith, Sylvie said.
Kate Atkinson
Image
They said love made you strong, but in Louise's opinion it made you weak. It corkscrewed into your heart and you couldn't get it out again, not without ripping your heart to pieces.
Kate Atkinson
Image
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.
Kate Atkinson
Image
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.
Kate Atkinson
Image
Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness, a conundrum that she couldn’t even begin to solve.
Kate Atkinson
Image
If you don't have a unique voice, then you're not really a writer.
Kate Atkinson
Image
The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories.
Kate Atkinson
Image
Jennifer had never liked the pain of remembering what had happened, but for Theo it was the pain that kept Laura alive in his memory. He was afraid that if it ever began to heal she would disappear.
Kate Atkinson
Image
Time was a thief, he stole your life away from you and the only way you could get it back was to outwit him and snatch it right back.
Kate Atkinson
Image
When you chopped logs with the ax and they split open they smelled beautiful, like Christmas. But when you split someone's head open it smelled like abattoir and quite overpowered the scent of the wild lilacs you'd cut and brought into the house only this morning, which was already another life.
Kate Atkinson
Image
She should have done science, not spent all her time with her head in novels. Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.
Kate Atkinson
Image
Probably not needing to be published would give me more time to think about a book.
Kate Atkinson
Image
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
Image
I think about death a lot, I really do, because I can't believe I won't exist. It's the ego isn't it? I feel that I should retreat into a better form of Zen Buddhism than this kind of ego-dominated thing. But I don't know, I mean, I want to come back as a tree but I suspect that it's just not going to happen, is it?
Kate Atkinson
Image
Love was the hardest thing. Don't let anyone ever tell you different.
Kate Atkinson