Louise was an urbanite, she preferred the gut-thrilling sound of an emergency siren slicing through the night to the noise of country birds at dawn. Pub brawls, racket roadworks, mugged tourists, the badlands on a Saturday night - they all made sense, they were all part of the huge, dirty, torn social fabric. There was a war raging out there in the city, and she was part of the fight, but the countryside unsettled her because she didn't know who the enemy was. She had always preferred North and South to Withering Heights. All that demented running around the moors, identifying yourself with the scenery, not a good role model for a woman.

— Kate Atkinson

Maybe this was why people filled their house with stinking cats, so they didn't notice that they were alone, so they wouldn't die without a living soul noticing.

— Kate Atkinson

Men had no purpose on earth whereas women were gods walking unrecognized among them.

— Kate Atkinson

Mum had a Charles-and-Diana wedding mug that had survived longer than the marriage itself. Mum had worshiped Princess Di and frequently lamented her passing. "Gone," she would say, shaking her head in disbelief. "Just like that. All that exercise for nothing." Diana-worship was the nearest thing Mum had to a religion.

— Kate Atkinson

Numinous," Ursula said, breaking the silence eventually. "There's a spark of the divine in the world -- not God, her'er done with God, but something. Is it love? Not silly romantic love, but something more profound..."" I think it's perhaps something we don't have a name for," Teddy said. "We want to name everything. Perhaps that's where we've gone wrong.""' And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.' Having dominion over everything has been a terrible curse."Afterward -- because it turned out there was an afterward for Teddy -- he resolved that he would try always to be kind. It was the best he could do. It was all that he could do. And it might be love, after all.

— Kate Atkinson

Oh, man, ‘the nursery,’” Dominic said, “what a hell-hole. If I had kids I’d give them the nicest room in the house.”“You do have kids,” his kid said.“Oh, yeah, well, right, you know what I mean.

— 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

Pam wasn't what Gloria would have called a friend, just someone she had known for so long that she had given up trying to get rid of her.

— Kate Atkinson

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 pasts what you take with you.

— Kate Atkinson