Kate Atkinson quotes

Kate Atkinson is a British author, widely recognized for her novels blending literary fiction with mystery and historical elements. Her work often explores themes of family, memory, and the complexities of fate. She has won multiple literary awards, including the Costa Book Award. Here are 26 of her quotes:

Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.' (Kate Atkinson)
I think about death a lot, I really do, because I can't believe I won't exist. It's the ego isn't it? I feel that I should retreat into a better form of Zen Buddhism than this kind of ego-dominated thing. But I don't know, I mean, I want to come back as a tree but I suspect that it's just not going to happen, is it? View quote
Kate Atkinson
Certainly I had a really terrible time with 'Emotionally Weird.' When I finished it, I thought, 'I can't write any more. View quote
Kate Atkinson
Ethics are not necessarily to do with being law-abiding. I am very interested in the moral path, doing the right thing. View quote
Kate Atkinson
I spent four years doing a doctorate in postmodern American literature. I can recognize it when I see it. View quote
Kate Atkinson
When I'm writing, my neural pathways get blocked. I can't read. I can barely hold a conversation without forgetting words and names. I wish I could wear the same clothes and eat the same food each day. View quote
Kate Atkinson
I usually start writing a novel that I then abandon. When I say abandon, I don't think any writer ever abandons anything that they regard as even a half-good sentence. So you recycle. I mean, I can hang on to a sentence for several years and then put it into a book that's completely different from the one it started in. View quote
Kate Atkinson
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. View quote
Kate Atkinson
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. View quote
Kate Atkinson
Probably not needing to be published would give me more time to think about a book. View quote
Kate Atkinson
The great thing about writing compared to life is getting to tie things up. (Kate Atkinson)
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. View quote
Kate Atkinson
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. View quote
Kate Atkinson
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. View quote
Kate Atkinson
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. View quote
Kate Atkinson
I think you have to learn for yourself how to write. I'm slightly mystified by creative writing courses - God love them - because I can't understand how you can explain a process that I find so baffling. View quote
Kate Atkinson
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. View quote
Kate Atkinson
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? View quote
Kate Atkinson
The past is a cupboard full of light and all you have to do is find the key that opens the door. View quote
Kate Atkinson
Sometimes,' Sylvie said, 'one can mistake gratitude for love. View quote
Kate Atkinson
Alternate history fascinates me, as it fascinates all novelists, because 'What if?' is the big thing. (Kate Atkinson)
Not being published would be great. When I say that to other writers they look at me as if I'm totally insane. View quote
Kate Atkinson
It's been said that the men in my books have been absent, or weak, or creepy. View quote
Kate Atkinson
If you don't have a unique voice, then you're not really a writer. View quote
Kate Atkinson
I did feel when my mother died if anyone was going to haunt me it would be her. And she hasn't, so I think it is possibly the end. View quote
Kate Atkinson