Elizabeth Wein Quotes
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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.
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Hope is treacherous, but how can you live without it?
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It’s awful, telling it like this, isn’t it? As though we didn’t know the ending. As though it could have another ending. It’s like watching Romeo drink poison. Every time you see it you get fooled into thinking his girlfriend might wake up and stop him. Every single time you see it you want to shout, 'You stupid ass, just wait a minute,' and she’ll open her eyes! 'Oi, you, you twat, open your eyes, wake up! Don’t die this time!' But they always do.
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Sometimes I feel as if the only thing I can do is write. It helps me think.
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I wish you could go through life without ever caring about anything, without ever getting attached to people and dreams and inaccessible places. It just makes you sad when you can never go back.
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Writing to you like this makes me feel that you are still alive. It’s an illusion I’ve noticed before—words on a page are like oxygen to a petrol engine, firing up ghosts. It lasts only while the words are in your head. After you put down the paper or the pen, the pistons fall lifeless again.
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It had never occurred to me that simply being with a fellow prisoner would make me feel like I was still in prison.
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Bloody Machiavellian English Intelligence Officer playing God.
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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.
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Emmy and I are still Habte Sadek's favorite foreigners, and it is all because I wanted to look at his feet when I was eleven years old! But it never hurts to be polite to people.
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I have nothing to lose. I am going to dare it. I will aim for the sun.
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Look at me!’ I screeched. ‘Look at me, Amadeus von Linden, you sadistic hypocrite, and watch this time! You’re not questioning me now, this isn’t your work, I’m not an enemy agent spewing wireless code! I’m just a minging Scots slag screaming insults at your daughter! So enjoy yourself and watch! Think of Isolde! Think of Isolde and watch!
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One moment flying in green sunlight, then the sky suddenly grey and dark.
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Truth is the daughter of time, not authority.
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I really would like to catapult myself back there in time and kick my own teeth in.
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Her own hair was a glory of copper fire that morning, shining like a whisky still, long and loose in gentle flames down her back.
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It’s not desperation—there is something inhuman in it. That is what I find so creepy. Five years of destruction and mayhem, lives lost everywhere, shortages of food and fuel and clothing—and the insane mind behind it just urges us all on and on to more destruction. And we all keep playing.
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I think as readers we put ourselves in the protagonist's place because we want to be like that person. That's why sometimes we don't like protagonists who aren't all that nice; we want to relate to the protagonist.
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But mainly, so very, very stupid. I desperately want to grow old.
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I am no longer afraid of getting old. Indeed I can't believe I ever said anything so stupid. So childish. So offensive and arrogant. But mainly, so very, very stupid. I desperately want to grow old.
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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.
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How do you ever hold on to anybody?
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I am quite Pan-like in my naïve confidence that he will play by the rules and keep his word.
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Things became more civilized all of a sudden. Coffee does that. Or maybe it is women who do that.