One Good Turn Quotes

“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, One Good Turn

“Love was the hardest thing. Don't let anyone ever tell you different.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“Julia's vocabulary was "chock-full" of strangely archaic words - "spiffing," "crumbs," "jeepers" - that seemed to have originated in some prewar girls' annual rather than in Julia's own life. For Jackson, words were functional, they helped you get to places and explain things. For Julia, they were freighted with inexplicable emotion.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“You said five little words to someone--How can I help you?--and it was as if you'd mortgaged your soul out to them.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“So, what do they pay you for...exactly?"
"Slapped around. Tied up. Beaten. Given orders, made to do things."
"What kind of things?"
"You know."
"No, I can't even begin to imagine."
"Lick my boots, crawl on floor, eat like dog."
"Nothing useful, then, like hoovering?”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“The Grim Reaper, Gloria corrected herself - if anyone deserved capital letters it was surely Death. Gloria would rather like to be the Grim Reaper. She wouldn't necessarily be grim, she suspected she would be quite cheerful (Come along now, don't make such a fuss).”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“She... applied makeup, enough to have made an effort, not enough to be blatantly a woman...”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“Sometimes you wondered why anyone bothered crawling out of the cradle when what lay ahead was so darn difficult.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“But melancholy, that was his own true humor. A miserable bastard, in other words.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“One of the things Jackson liked about Julia was her independence, one of the things he didn’t like about Julia was her independence.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“No one ever warned you about how ferocious mother love could be, let’s face it, no one warned you about anything.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“Gloria didn’t believe in heaven, although she did occasionally worry that it was a place that existed only if you did believe in it. She wondered if people would be so keen on the idea of the next life if it was, say, underground. Or full of people like Pam. And relentlessly, tediously boring, like an everlasting Baptist service but without the occasional excitement of a full immersion.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“She was real and she was dead. And she was out there somewhere.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“Boxes within boxes, dolls within dolls, worlds within worlds. Everything was connected. Everything in the whole world.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“He liked Vermeer, all those cool interiors spoke of an ordinariness he could relate to, a moment in time captured forever, because life wasn’t about legions of Madonnas and water lilies, it was about the commonplace of details—the woman pouring milk from a jug, the boy sitting at the kitchen table, eating a chicken pie.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“Gloria regretted that she wasn’t a knitter, she could be producing a useful garment while waiting for Graham to die.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“Gloria had never understood why you would want to wear an instrument of torture and death as an ornament. You may as well wear a noose or a guillotine. At least Tatiana’s earrings were plain, no twin dying bodies of Christ writhing on them. Did the crucifixes ever put the clients off ? Jews, Muslims, atheists, vampires— how did they feel?”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“His body was exhausted, but his brain had apparently discovered a secret amphetamine factory and was popping pills at will. The picture on the wall opposite his bed was”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“Another day where nothing has happened, he thought. That was a good thing, he reminded himself. What was the Chinese curse? May you live in interesting times.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“After he was born, the midwife said, “Boys wreck your house, girls wreck your head.” Archie seemed intent on doing both.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“a group of mostly middle-aged people (Scots, by their pallor) doing tai chi—Jackson didn’t get tai chi, it looked okay on television when you saw people doing it in China, but in Scotland it looked, let’s face it, arsy.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“It was a relief to everyone, especially his wife, when, three years after he retired, he dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of an argument with a neighbor who had parked his car in front of their house.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“Gloria watched as Terry lumbered down the path. He reminded her a little of King Kong, but less friendly.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“Terence Smith. Graham’s golem, formed from the slime at the bottom of a pond of lowlifes somewhere in the Midlands.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“Their parts were fixed—Graham was the villain, Ewan took the role of worthy leading man, Nick was his long-suffering sidekick, and Emily was forever the adolescent ingenue, the moody daughter whose life had been blighted by everyone else (apparently). Gloria herself was offstage, playing the woman in the kitchen.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“Working for the environment didn’t mean Ewan was a particularly nice person. He was very self-righteous about the fact that he didn’t want any part of Graham’s business empire, which apparently was playing its own small part in the “global capitalist conspiracy.” That didn’t stop him from taking money from Graham whenever he was home.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“fellow alumni, a fact which Murdo said “just goes to show.” Gloria thought that it didn’t go to show anything except, possibly, that they were greedier and more ruthless than their former classmates.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“That was the good thing about Julia, her family background was even more fucked up than his. They were a pair of freakishly bereaved people.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“Life’s too short,” she said. There were days when Jackson thought life was too long.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“They’ve embraced capitalism,” one man said, “so they can take the bloody consequences.” Martin couldn’t tell if “bloody” was being used as an expletive or merely a descriptive.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn