Kate Atkinson
Kate Atkinson
Kate Atkinson, MBEis an award-winning English writer. She won the Whitbread Book of the Year prize in 1995 and, under its new name the Costa Book Awards, in 2013 and 2015 in the Novels category...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionAuthor
bad brain ending fairy fiction good hard legacy work
The legacy of the fairy story in my brain is that everything will work out. In fiction it would be very hard for me, as a writer, to give a bad ending to a good character, or give a good ending to a bad character. That's probably not a very postmodern thing to say.
age fact good ideal life means partly quieter space takes talk time trying
I'm trying to take more nothing time - and that means sacrificing doing. It's partly to do with age, partly to do with the fact that writing takes up a lot of space in your head. My ideal is to go back to when I was a child. My life is quieter than it used to be. More and more I don't really want to talk to people. I'd make a good nun, actually.
hang novel regard sentence several writer
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.
feeling felt quite remember skewed understand
Without siblings you get quite a skewed vision of yourself and of the world. I always felt I didn't understand how it worked. I remember feeling quite lonely.
courses creative explain god love process slightly understand
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.
failing felt led life lost second struck
It was failing part of my Ph.D. that led me into novel-writing. By then I was 29, had remarried and had a second baby. It struck me that I'd lost my path in life and I felt frustrated. That's when I started to write.
what-if novelists bigs
Alternate history fascinates me, as it fascinates all novelists, because 'What if?' is the big thing.
years literature four
I spent four years doing a doctorate in postmodern American literature. I can recognize it when I see it.
mother thinking would-be
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.
writing terrible-times finished
Certainly I had a really terrible time with 'Emotionally Weird.' When I finished it, I thought, 'I can't write any more.
becoming
Life wasn't about becoming, was it? It was about being.
thinking catholic would-be
I'm a lapsed Quaker. I don't go to meetings any more. But I'm very drawn to Catholicism - all that glitter. I'd love to be a Catholic. I think it would be fantastic - faith, forgiveness, absolution, extreme unction - all these wonderful words. I don't think anyone who was ever born a Catholic hasn't died a Catholic, no matter how lapsed they are.
writing would-be wonderful
Hindsight's a wonderful thing. If we all had it there would be no history to write about.
past doors keys
The past is a cupboard full of light and all you have to do is find the key that opens the door.