Top 200 Kate Atkinson Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “What if we had a chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

— Kate Atkinson

2. “Ethics are not necessarily to do with being law-abiding. I am very interested in the moral path, doing the right thing.”

— Kate Atkinson

3. “I am mad, I think. I am mad therefore I think. I am mad therefore I think I am.”

— Kate Atkinson

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

— Kate Atkinson

5. “It was a long time ago now. And it was yesterday.”

— Kate Atkinson

6. “The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories.”

— Kate Atkinson

7. “Become such as you are, having learned what that is.”

— Kate Atkinson

8. “Whatever happens to you, embrace it, the good and the bad equally. Death is just one more thing to be embraced.”

— Kate Atkinson

9. “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.”

— Kate Atkinson

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

10. “In the endgame a pawn can change into a queen.”

— Kate Atkinson

11. “Do not equate nationalism with patriotism... Nationalism is the first step on the road to Fascism.”

— Kate Atkinson

12. “Life wasn’t about becoming, was it? It was about being.”

— Kate Atkinson

13. “Alternate history fascinates me, as it fascinates all novelists, because ‘What if?’ is the big thing.”

— Kate Atkinson

14. “Most people muddled through events and only in retrospect realized their significance.”

— Kate Atkinson

15. “Life is too precious to be unhappy.”

— Kate Atkinson

16. “What did science ever do for the world, apart from make better ways of killing people?” Sylvie said.”

— Kate Atkinson

17. “Laika,” she would say, “the first dog in space. She died of heat and stress after a few hours. She was rescued from an animal center, she must have thought she was going to a home, to a family, and instead they sent her to the loneliest death in the world.”

— Kate Atkinson

18. “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.”

— Kate Atkinson

19. “Happiness, like life itself, was as fragile as a bird’s heartbeat, as fleeting as the bluebells in the wood, but while it lasted, Fox Corner was an Arcadian dream.”

— Kate Atkinson

20. “Fairy tales opened up a door into my imagination – they don’t conform to the reality that’s around you as a child. I started reading when I was three and read everything, but I wanted to be an actress.”

— Kate Atkinson

Featured in: Reading Quotes

21. “Human nature favors the tribal. Tribalism engenders violence. It was ever thus and so it will ever be.”

— Kate Atkinson

22. “After he was born, the midwife said, “Boys wreck your house, girls wreck your head.” Archie seemed intent on doing both.”

— Kate Atkinson

23. “I run to death, and death meets me as fast, And all my pleasures are like yesterday.”

— Kate Atkinson

24. “She was twenty-eight but already jaded. Twenty-eight seemed a particularly unsatisfactory age. She was no longer young and yet no one ever seemed to take her seriously as an adult. People still told her what to do all the time, it was infuriating. Her only power seemed to be over her own children and even that was limited by endless negotiation.”

— Kate Atkinson

25. “Hindsight’s a wonderful thing. If we all had it there would be no history to write about.”

— Kate Atkinson

26. “I loved him so much. Love him so much. I don’t know why I use the past tense. It’s not as if love dies with the beloved.”

— Kate Atkinson

27. “In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.”

— Kate Atkinson

28. “I feel as if I’m waiting for something dreadful to happen, and then I realize it already has.”

— Kate Atkinson

29. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you, Miss Armstrong. But why would you not when the reality was so awful? And that was that. Juliet’s war.”

— Kate Atkinson

30. “The past is a cupboard full of light and all you have to do is find the key that opens the door.”

— Kate Atkinson

31. “A man with an Irish accent could sound wise and poetic and interesting even when he wasn’t.”

— Kate Atkinson

32. “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.”

— Kate Atkinson

33. “Ladies who lurch.”

— Kate Atkinson

34. “Don’t seek out elaborate metaphors,” her English teacher had said of her school essays, but her mother’s death had revealed that there was no metaphor too ostentatious for grief. It was a terrible thing and demanded embellishment.”

— Kate Atkinson

35. “He was born a politician. No, Ursula thought, he was born a baby, like everyone else. And this is what he has chosen to become.”

— Kate Atkinson

36. “Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness, a conundrum that she couldn’t even begin to solve.”

— Kate Atkinson

37. “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.”

— Kate Atkinson

38. “All those unclaimed arms and legs lost in the fields of Flanders – Ursula imagined them pushing roots down into the mud and shoots up to the sky and growing once again into men. An army of men marching back for revenge.”

— Kate Atkinson

39. “Love of fate?” “It means acceptance. Whatever happens to you, embrace it, the good and the bad equally. Death is just one more thing to be embraced, I suppose.”

— Kate Atkinson

40. “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.”

— Kate Atkinson

41. “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.”

— Kate Atkinson

Featured in: Strong Quotes

42. “Love was the hardest thing. Don’t let anyone ever tell you different.”

— Kate Atkinson

43. “What a good husband you are”, Nancy said afterward, “always taking your wife’s side rather thn your mother’s.” “It’s the side of reason I am on”, Teddy said, “It just so happens that that’s where you’re always to be found and my mother rarely.”

— Kate Atkinson

44. “Sacrifice, by its nature, was predicated on giving, not receiving.”

— Kate Atkinson

45. “All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win is for enough good women to do nothing.”

— Kate Atkinson

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

— Kate Atkinson

47. “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.”

— Kate Atkinson

48. “The whole edifice of civilization turned out to be constructed from an unstable mix of quicksand and imagination.”

— Kate Atkinson

49. “What would I put in my bottom drawer? – I would put only sharp objects, the clean lines of broken glass, the honed steel of paring knives, the tiny saw-teeth of bread knives and the soothing edges of razor blades, I weigh knives in my hands like strange comforters.”

— Kate Atkinson

50. “It was just as well the baby was strapped into his high chair, because every so often he would suddenly fling out his arms and legs and try to launch himself into the air like a suicidal starfish.”

— Kate Atkinson