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Maddie took the top of her egg off. The hot bright yolk was like summer sun breaking through cloud. The first daffodil in the snow. A gold sovereign wrapped in a white silk handkerchief. She dipped her spoon in it and licked it.
Elizabeth Wein -
And you know, it was like I was breathing my own self back into me to say these word,s to remember that these things existed--the green trees of the eastern woodland at home in North America, their strong and supple branches, sunlight through the trees.
Elizabeth Wein
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I'M SCOTTISH!
Elizabeth Wein -
She has the filthiest tongue of any woman in France. Burn her mouth clean.
Elizabeth Wein -
One moment flying in green sunlight, then the sky suddenly grey and dark.
Elizabeth Wein -
But I've never despised myself so much as I did that day - she was so small and - so fierce, so beautiful, it was like breaking a hawk's wings, stopping up a clear spring with bricks - digging up roses to make space to park your tank. Pointless and ugly.
Elizabeth Wein -
Driving like a man is one of her few foibles.
Elizabeth Wein -
Fight with realistic hope, not to destroy all the world's wrong, but to renew its good.
Elizabeth Wein
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Bloody Machiavellian English Intelligence Officer playing God.
Elizabeth Wein -
Inspector Milne's suspicious prying appeared to have awakened her inner Bolshevik, and so I discovered my own lady mother is not above quietly circumventing the law.
Elizabeth Wein -
Nothing like an arcane literary debate with your tyrannical master while you pass the time leading to your execution.
Elizabeth Wein -
It is so hard trying to say what you mean.
Elizabeth Wein -
People are complicated. There is so much more to everybody than you realise.
Elizabeth Wein -
More than anything else, I think, Maddie went to war on behalf of the Holy Island seals.
Elizabeth Wein
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She tried not to think about what it would be like running across the airfield to the radio room an hour from now, under fire. But she did it. Because you do. It is incredible what you do, knowing you have to.
Elizabeth Wein -
It had never occurred to me that simply being with a fellow prisoner would make me feel like I was still in prison.
Elizabeth Wein -
But mainly, so very, very stupid. I desperately want to grow old.
Elizabeth Wein -
That is a terrifically intimate thing, you know? Letting a stranger light your cigarette. Leaning forward so he can hold a flame to your lips. Pausing to breathe in before you pull back again.
Elizabeth Wein -
These are just stories, you know. They are part of what we are, but they are not the real thing. All this year I’ve been thinking, What would White Raven do? And today, every time I thought it, I just didn’t care what White Raven would do. So today I’ve just done what I would do. I’ve just done what I think is right. I’m not going to stop making up stories. But I’m thinking now that they aren’t just for pretending to be someone else, someone more exciting, someone braver than you really are. They are not always jut a maze to get lost in so you can run away from life. They can just as well be maps to help you navigate.
Elizabeth Wein -
Hope is the most treacherous thing in the world. It lifts you and lets you plummet. But as long as you're being lifted you don't worry about plummeting.
Elizabeth Wein
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Hope is treacherous, but how can you live without it?
Elizabeth Wein -
It was a rather extraordinary conversation if you think about it -- both of us speaking in code. But not military code, not Intelligence or Resistance code -- just feminine code.
Elizabeth Wein -
Southampton's barrage balloons floated gleaming in the moonlight like the ghosts of elephants and hippos.
Elizabeth Wein -
He just put his hand through the bulkhead, exactly as she'd done, and squeezed my shoulder. He has very strong fingers. And he kept his hand there the whole way home, even when he was reading the map and giving me headings. So I am not flying alone now after all.
Elizabeth Wein