Quotes From "Life After Life" By Kate Atkinson

I mean what else is there for a woman to do if she doesn't want to go from the parental to the marital home with nothing in between? 'An educated woman, ' Millie amended. 'An educated woman, ' Ursula agreed. Kate Atkinson

The mind is a fathomless mystery. Kate Atkinson

Or was it, as everyone told her, and as she must believe, all in her head? And so what if it was - wasn't everything in her head real too? What if there was no demonstrable reality? What if there was nothing beyond the mind? Kate Atkinson

Pamela produced placid babies. "They don't tend to turn feral until they're two, " she said. Kate Atkinson

Her true hope was that something would happen in the course of her time abroad that would mean she need never take the place. What that 'something' was she had no idea. Kate Atkinson

Sometimes it was harder to change the past than it was the future. Kate Atkinson

Small boys were a mystery to Sylvie. The satisfaction they gained from throwing sticks or stones for hours on end, the obsessive collection of inanimate objects, the brutal destruction of the fragile world around them, all seemed at odds with the men they were supposed to become. Kate Atkinson

Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness Kate Atkinson

You must never believe everything they say about a person. Generally speaking, most of it will be lies, half-truths at best. Kate Atkinson

The simple rule: some get saved, but most don't. The choices are important before the years begin to go so very fast. Jill McCorkle

So much for progress. How quickly civilization could dissolve into its more ugly elements. Kate Atkinson

No one likes to talk about the positive parts of getting older and aging into orphanhood, how with your parents you often bury a lot of things you were never able to confront or fix or let go of. Jill McCorkle

She was tremendously fond of Ralph. Not hounded by love the way some women were. With Crighton she had been teased endlessly by the idea of it, but with Ralph it was more straightforward. Again not love, more like the feelings you would have for a favorite dog (and, no, she would never have said such a thing to him. Some people, a lot of people, didn't understand how attached one could be to a dog.) . Kate Atkinson

How many times would he disappoint you in a day if you were married to him, Ursula wondered? Kate Atkinson

Life wasn't about becoming, was it? It was about being. Kate Atkinson

We cannot turn away, ” Miss Woolf told her, “we must get on with our job and we must bear witness.” What did that mean, Ursula wondered. “It means, ” Miss Woolf said, “that we must remember these people when we are safely in the futu Kate Atkinson