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. Kate Atkinson Read Quote
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. Kate Atkinson Read Quote
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? Kate Atkinson Read Quote
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. Kate Atkinson Read Quote
But I, you know, if I could choose a period to go back to, I think I would like to live through the Blitz. ‘Cause you do read so many accounts of people saying they’re living their lives at such an intense pitch that it was a completely different way of living. Kate Atkinson Read Quote
Because I’ve a track record of talking about books I never write, in Australia they think I’m about to write a book about Jane Austen. Something I said at some festival. Kate Atkinson Read Quote
Certainly I had a really terrible time with ‘Emotionally Weird.’ When I finished it, I thought, ‘I can’t write any more.’ Kate Atkinson Read Quote
I was an only child and grew up in York where my parents ran a surgical supplies shop. When I say I wish I had brothers and sisters, friends say it’s not what it’s cracked up to be, but I think it must be good to have someone who knew you from the beginning. Kate Atkinson Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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. Kate Atkinson Read Quote
