Everyone said, 'Well, you're very old for a first novel,' and I said, 'How do you write when … - Kate Atkinson

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'Kitchen Confidential' wasn't a cautionary or an expose. I wrote it as an entertainment for New York tri-state area line cooks and restaurant lifers, basically; I had no expectation that it would move as far west as Philadelphia.

Kate Atkinson

Everyone said, 'Well, you're very old for a first novel,' and I said, 'How do you write when you haven't lived? How do you write when you have no experience? How do you write straight out of university?

Everyone, Experience, Firsts, Said, Write, Writing

Same Author Quotes

Whatever happens to you, embrace it, the good and the bad equally. Death is just one more thing to be embraced.

Embrace, Embraced, Equally, Good, Happens, Whatever Happens

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.

1993, Awards, Ian, Mind, Museums, Writing

Alternate history fascinates me, as it fascinates all novelists, because 'What if?' is the big thing.

Bigs, Fascinates, History, Novelists, What If

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.

Catholic, Catholicism, Died, Glitter, Thinking, Would Be

Sylvie's knowledge, like Izzie's, was random yet far-ranging, 'The sign that one has acquired one's learning from reading novels rather than an education.

Knowledge, Like, Novel, Novels, Reading, Reading Novels