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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.

Kate Atkinson

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Kate Atkinson
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: December 20
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Writer
Jórvík
Bigs
Titles
Ends
Goals
Ideas
Apart
Book
Beginning
Ambience
Feel
Books
Probable
Feels
Getting
Title
Writing
Goal
Vague
Things
Rather
Ending

More quotes by Kate Atkinson

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As I watch, the sky fills with clouds of snow feathers from every kind of bird there ever was and even some that only exist in the imagination, like the bluebirds that fly over the rainbow.
Kate Atkinson
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You can step in the same river but the water will always be new.
Kate Atkinson
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(although anyone with half a brain must surely be mired in existential gloom all the time)
Kate Atkinson
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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
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Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.'
Kate Atkinson
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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 was on the verge of something numinous and profound and in one more second the universe was going to crack open and arcana would rain down on my head like grace and all the cosmic mysteries were going to be revealed.
Kate Atkinson
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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
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Why do cats sleep so much? Perhaps they've been trusted with some major cosmic task, an essential law of physics - such as: if there are less than five million cats sleeping at any one time the world will stop spinning.
Kate Atkinson
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Become such as you are, having learned what that is.
Kate Atkinson
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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
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Men had no purpose on earth whereas women were gods walking unrecognized among them.
Kate Atkinson
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No point in thinking, you just have to get on with life. We only have one after all, we should try and do our best. We can never get it right, but we must try.
Kate Atkinson
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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.
Kate Atkinson
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You must never believe everything they say about a person. Generally speaking, most of it will be lies, half-truths at best.
Kate Atkinson
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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.
Kate Atkinson
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The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories.
Kate Atkinson
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The past is a cupboard full of light and all you have to do is find the key that opens the door.
Kate Atkinson
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If you don't have a unique voice, then you're not really a writer.
Kate Atkinson
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Love was the hardest thing. Don't let anyone ever tell you different.
Kate Atkinson