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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?

-Kate Atkinson

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Sometimes I Would Like

Kate Atkinson

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

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

She Was A Terrible Mother, There Was No Doubt About It, But She Didn't Even Have The Strength To Feel Guilty.

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

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

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

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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The Past Is What You Take With You.

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.

Most People Muddled Through Events And Only In Retrospect Realized Their Significance.

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

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.

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.

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

Everyone Said, 'well, You're Very Old For A First Novel,' And I Said, 'how Do You Write When You Haven't Lived? How Do You Write When You Have No Experience? How Do You Write Straight Out Of University?

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.

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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

If People Believed In Eternal Damnation They Might Not Be Seizing The Day Quite So Much.

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