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I Can't Help But Think That It's An Unfortunate Custom To Name Children After People Who Come To Sticky Ends. Even If They Are Fictional Characters, It Doesn't Bode Well For The Poor Things. There Are Too Many Judes And Tesses And Clarissas And Cordelias Around. If We Must Name Our Children After Literary Figures Then We Should Search Out Happy Ones, Although It's True They Are Much Harder To Find.

-Kate Atkinson

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I Can't Help But

Kate Atkinson

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I Can't Help But Think That It's An Unfortunate Custom To Name Children After People Who Come To Sticky Ends. Even If They Are Fictional Characters, It Doesn't Bode Well For The Poor Things. There Are Too Many Judes And Tesses And Clarissas And Cordelias Around. If We Must Name Our Children After Literary Figures Then We Should Search Out Happy Ones, Although It's True They Are Much Harder To Find.

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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.

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.

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.

The Grim Reaper, Gloria Corrected Herself - If Anyone Deserved Capital Letters It Was Surely Death. Gloria Would Rather Like To Be The Grim Reaper. She Wouldn't Necessarily Be Grim, She Suspected She Would Be Quite Cheerful (come Along Now, Don't Make Such A Fuss).

What Did You Do When The Worst Thing That Could Happen To You Had Already Happened - How Did You Live Life Then? You Had To Hand It To Theo Wyre, Just Carrying On Living Required A Strength And Courage That Most People Didn't Have.

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.

I Have Been To The World's End And Back And Now I Know What I Would Put In My Bottom Drawer .i Would Put My Sisters.

The Past Is A Cupboard Full Of Light And All You Have To Do Is Find The Key That Opens The Door.

Julia's Vocabulary Was "chock-full" Of Strangely Archaic Words - "spiffing," "crumbs," "jeepers" - That Seemed To Have Originated In Some Prewar Girls' Annual Rather Than In Julia's Own Life. For Jackson, Words Were Functional, They Helped You Get To Places And Explain Things. For Julia, They Were Freighted With Inexplicable Emotion.

I Am Mad, I Think. I Am Mad Therefore I Think. I Am Mad Therefore I Think I Am.

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.

You Must Never Believe Everything They Say About A Person. Generally Speaking, Most Of It Will Be Lies, Half-truths At Best.

Men Had No Purpose On Earth Whereas Women Were Gods Walking Unrecognized Among Them.

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.

My Father Was An Autodidact. It Wasn't A Middle-class House. Shopkeepers Are Aspirant. He Paid For Me To Go To Private School. He Was Denied An Education - He Had A Horrible Childhood. He Got A Place At A Grammar School And Wasn't Allowed To Go.

I Can't Help But Think That It's An Unfortunate Custom To Name Children After People Who Come To Sticky Ends. Even If They Are Fictional Characters, It Doesn't Bode Well For The Poor Things. There Are Too Many Judes And Tesses And Clarissas And Cordelias Around. If We Must Name Our Children After Literary Figures Then We Should Search Out Happy Ones, Although It's True They Are Much Harder To Find.

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.

Hindsight's A Wonderful Thing. If We All Had It There Would Be No History To Write About.

I Spent Four Years Doing A Doctorate In Postmodern American Literature. I Can Recognize It When I See It.

Sometimes,' Sylvie Said, 'one Can Mistake Gratitude For Love.

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.

She Doesn't Believe In Dogs," Bridget Said. "dogs Are Hardly An Article Of Faith," Sylvie Said.

Whatever Happens To You, Embrace It, The Good And The Bad Equally. Death Is Just One More Thing To Be Embraced.

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Become Such As You Are, Having Learned What That Is.

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.

Sometimes I Would Like To Cry. I Close My Eyes. Why Weren't We Designed So That We Can Close Our Ears As Well? (perhaps Because We Would Never Open Them.) Is There Some Way That I Could Accelerate My Evolution And Develop Earlids?

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Love Was The Hardest Thing. Don't Let Anyone Ever Tell You Different.

The Past Is What You Take With You.

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In The End, It Is My Belief, Words Are The Only Things That Can Construct A World That Makes Sense.

It Wasn't That [he] Believed In Religion, Or A God, Or An Afterlife. He Just Knew It Was Impossible To Feel This Much Love And For It To End.

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Perhaps We Are On An Insula Ex Machina, An Artificial Place Not In The Real World At All -- A Backdrop For The Stories We Must Tell.

Not Being Published Would Be Great. When I Say That To Other Writers They Look At Me As If I'm Totally Insane.

The Great Thing About Writing Compared To Life Is Getting To Tie Things Up.

I Can't Imagine What It Would Be Like To Write In A Relaxed State. I'm Going To Be Writing Some Stories For My Own Interest. I Want To Experiment With Different Things And See If I Can Approach Writing With Much Less Control And In A Better Psychological State. It Will Be Like Breaking Out Of A Straitjacket.

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Sometimes It Was Harder To Change The Past Than It Was The Future.

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