“My father was an autodidact. It wasn't a middle-class house. Shopkeepe...” — Kate Atkinson Quote

“My father was an autodidact. It wasn't 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 wasn't allowed to go.”

“Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.'”

“If you don't have a unique voice, then you're not really a writer.”

“Good questions outrank easy answers.”

“Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.”

“Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first from his teachers; the second, more personal and important, from himself.”