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I Find The Past So Fascinating. Photographs Are Strange, Almost Surreal, Almost Here Yet Gone. I Slip Into Thinking What The Past Must Have Been Like And I Enjoy Creating That Ambience And Atmosphere - 1730 To Around 1870 Is The Most Interesting Period.

-Kate Atkinson

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I Find The Past

Kate Atkinson

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I Find The Past So Fascinating. Photographs Are Strange, Almost Surreal, Almost Here Yet Gone. I Slip Into Thinking What The Past Must Have Been Like And I Enjoy Creating That Ambience And Atmosphere - 1730 To Around 1870 Is The Most Interesting Period.

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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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Why Is Everything An 'adventure' With You?" Sylvie Said Irritably To Izzie." "because Life Is An Adventure, Of Course." "i Would Say It Was More Of An Endurance Race," Sylvie Said. "or An Obstacle Course.

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.

I've Always Loved Mysteries, The Something There That You Didn't Know, And With 'case Histories' I Just Decide To Make That More Up-front.

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.

What If We Had A Chance To Do It Again And Again, Until We Finally Did Get It Right? Wouldn't That Be Wonderful?

Ethics Are Not Necessarily To Do With Being Law-abiding. I Am Very Interested In The Moral Path, Doing The Right Thing.

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I Find The Past So Fascinating. Photographs Are Strange, Almost Surreal, Almost Here Yet Gone. I Slip Into Thinking What The Past Must Have Been Like And I Enjoy Creating That Ambience And Atmosphere - 1730 To Around 1870 Is The Most Interesting Period.

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.

Some People Spend Their Whole Lives Looking For Themselves, Yet Our Self Is The One Thing We Surely Cannot Lose (how Like A Cheap Philosopher I Am Become, Staying In This Benighted Place). From The Moment We Are Conceived It Is The Pattern In Our Blood And Our Bones Are Printed Through With It Like Sticks Of Seaside Rock. Nora, On The Other Hand, Says That She’s Surprised Anyone Knows Who They Are, Considering That Every Cell And Molecule In Our Bodies Has Been Replaced Many Times Over Since We Were Born.

Ursula Craved Solitude But She Hated Loneliness, A Conundrum That She Couldn’t Even Begin To Solve.

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

It's Been Said That The Men In My Books Have Been Absent, Or Weak, Or Creepy.

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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.

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Oh, God. What Was Happening To Her, She Was Turning Into A Normal Person.

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(although Anyone With Half A Brain Must Surely Be Mired In Existential Gloom All The Time)

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It Was A Long Time Ago Now. And It Was Yesterday.

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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.

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

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The Beginning Is The Word And The End Is Silence. And In Between Are All The Stories.

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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.

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

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

Life Wasn't About Becoming, Was It? It Was About Being.

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

Whatever Happens

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

You Can Step In The Same River But The Water Will Always Be New.

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.

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.

The Past Is What You Take With You.

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