When Im writing, my neural pathways get blocked. I cant 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. – Kate Atkinson
The cult of the individual is killing us. I think Twitter signals the death of western civilisation, but people have been saying that since Demosthenes. – Kate Atkinson
My father was an autodidact. It wasnt 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 wasnt allowed to go. – Kate Atkinson
Life is a very orderly thing, but in fiction there is a huge liberation and freedom. I can do what I like. Theres nothing that says I cant write a page of full stops. There is no should involved, although you wouldnt know that from literary reviews and critics. – Kate Atkinson
Acceptable food rots while we are chased from bins behind restaurants, chased from sleeping on the street, chased from relieving ourselves unless we pay for food or gas, until finally we are so hungry, sleepless, smelly, constipated and beaten-down that we simply die of lack of will to live. – Jane Siberry