Behind the Scenes at the Museum Quotes

“In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“I have been to the world's end and back and now I know what I would put in my bottom drawer. I would put my sisters.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“Patricia embraces me on the station platform. 'The past is what you leave behind in life, Ruby,' she says with the smile of a reincarnated lama. 'Nonsense, Patricia,' I tell her as I climb on board my train. 'The past's what you take with you.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“Sometimes I would like to cry. I close my eyes. Why weren't we designed so that we can close our ears as well? (Perhaps because we would never open them.) Is there some way that I could accelerate my evolution and develop earlids?”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“The past is a cupboard full of light and all you have to do is find the key that opens the door.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“Get down,' Bunty says grimly. 'Mummy's thinking.' (Although what Mummy's actually doing is wondering what it would be like if her entire family was wiped out and she could start again.)”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“As I watch, the sky fills with clouds of snow feathers from every kind of bird there ever was and even some that only exist in the imagination, like the bluebirds that fly over the rainbow.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“shop-bought cakes are a sign of sluttish housewifery.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“This is my Lost Property cupboard theory of the afterlife -

when we die we are taken to a great lost property cupboard where all the things we have ever lost have been kept for us - every hairgrip, every button and pencil, every tooth, every earring and key, every key, every pin.

All the library books, all the cats that never came back, all the coins, all the watches (which will still be keeping time for us).

And perhaps, too, the other less tangible things - tempers and patience (perhaps Patricia´s virginity will be there), religion, meaning, innocence and oceans of time.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“But I know nothing; my future is a wide-open vista, leading to an unknown country - The Rest Of My Life.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“Slattern! What a wonderful new word. 'Slattern,' I murmur appreciatively to Patricia.
'Yes, slattern,' Bunty says firmly. 'That's what she is.'
'Not a slut like you then?' Patricia says very quietly. Loud enough to be heard, but too quiet to be believed.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“I am a jewel. I am a drop of blood. I am Ruby Lennox!”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“The past is what you take with you.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“Everyone has left something here – the unnamed tribes, the Celts, the Romans, the Vikings, the Saxons, the Normans and all those who came after, they have all left their lost property – the buttons and fans, the rings and torques, the bullae and fibulae. The riverbank winks momentarily with a thousand, zillion, million pins. A trick of the light. The past is a cupboard full of light and all you have to do is find the key that opens the door. Pg486”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“but it seemed so much worse somehow when he turned out to have golden curls like an angel and eyes the colour of forget-me-nots.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“There’s too much history in York, the past is so crowded that sometimes it feels as if there’s no room for the living.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“When Lillian left work in the early evening the streets were slick and shiny with rain and the lamps flared yellow giving her the melancholy feeling that always came with the rain and the dark. She’d just struggled to push up her umbrella when the farmer from Saskatchewan came out of the shadows and tipped his hat again, very politely, and said could he escort her home? She put her small hand on his broad arm and held the umbrella over both their heads (he was very tall) and he walked her all the way back to her lodging-house where the landlady, Mrs Raicevic, looked after Edmund after school. By then, Lillian had learned the farmer’s name and she said, ‘Edmund, this is Mr Donner,’ and Pete Donner squatted right down and said, ‘Hello there, Edmund, you can call me Pete.’ Although he never did, preferring to call him ‘Pop’ almost from the day his mother married him.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“They have no sense of humour whatsoever – even Bunty has a sense of humour compared with our hosts. They have united Prussian gloom and Presbyterian dourness in an awesome combination.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“writing process,” as we glibly call it—as if sentences roll out smoothly on a factory production line rather than being manually wrought in a hellishly tedious part of the brain.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“The past is what you leave behind in life, Ruby,’ she says with the smile of a reincarnated lama. ‘Nonsense, Patricia,’ I tell her as I climb on board my train. ‘The past’s what you take with you.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“And, of course, Behind the Scenes is not about York, or things, or museums—like Tristram Shandy, like all literature, it’s about the journey of the self toward the light.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“Frank seemed to put the Great War behind him pretty well. He was determined to lead the most undramatic and ordinary life possible where the only problems would be from a teething child or greenfly on the floribunda rose he fancied growing by the front door of the house in Lowther Street. Pg98”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“Свого часу смерть видавалась трагедією, а зараз стала буденністю.”
― Кейт Аткінсон, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“I want to lift the lid and demand answers from my father to questions I don’t even know how to ask.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“If you were to ask me what the book is about (which is the most loathsome question you could ask—why bother to write the thing if you then have to explain it? It is what it is) and if I were forced to answer, I would say, “It’s about things.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“wine, puddings, both sweet and savoury, wrapped in cloths. Rachel surveyed her garnerings with satisfaction, unconsciously twisting the gold ring on her finger round and round, trying to loosen it. She knew when he put it on her finger that it was Alice’s ring – with a piece put in to accommodate her thick finger – but she hadn’t said anything, a wedding-ring was a wedding-ring, after all, no matter how you came by it. ‘To make thee respectable,’ Frederick said when he put it on her finger, as if that were enough. Rachel had her own harvest to come now, respectable or not, she was so swollen up with this child that he must be a prize-fighter in the making. He was going to be as strong as an ox, she could feel it, not like these spindly, sickly children, never one without a cough or a streaming nose. Lawrence and Tom clattered across the yard, Albert trailing behind them with his dog.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“Frank joined up the day that Albert crossed the Channel – Frank knew he was a coward and was terrified other people would find out as well so he thought he’d join up as quickly as possible before anyone noticed.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“feeling that always came with the rain and the dark. She’d just”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

“who is to say which of these is real and which a fiction? In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.”
― Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum