Elizabeth Wein Quotes
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Punishment and revenge are two different things.
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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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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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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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I have nothing to lose. I am going to dare it. I will aim for the sun.
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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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Each force in flight is balanced by an opposing force. The opposite of lift is weight. Weight is always trying to pull an object back to earth, so to get something to stay up, lift has to be greater than weight. You’d think your weight would always be the same, but it isn’t. When you do aerobatics or go into a dive—like a kite that’s plunging into the sand at the beach—there’s an increase in gravity, and that makes you weigh more. If you want your heavy kite to stay in the air, you have to increase the lift, as well. Maybe by waiting for a stronger wind. Maybe by finding a windier place to fly your kite. Maddie brought lift back into my life by forcing me outside. So did Bob, who introduced me to the editors of this magazine. So did Fernande, the chambermaid at the Paris Ritz, who gave me her daughter’s clothes and made me get dressed and brought me coffee every morning for three weeks.
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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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The Rosalie really did not want to go like the clappers and performed its usual consumptive drama every time we came to an uphill slope, coughing and gasping like a dying Dickens heroine, and finally just stopped—engine still gasping a bit but the car just stopped. Simply could not move forward up the hill. Choke full out but cylinders firing pathetically as though we were trying to make the poor thing run on nothing but air.
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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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So, I have no sense of direction. In some of us it is a TRAGIC FLAW.
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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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Listening to the Rabbits talk about their operations was like watching a horror movie in a foreign language. You sort of hoped you’d misunderstood what was going on. And then when you figured out what was really going on, it was worse than you’d thought.
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I ken who you are! You're Strathfearn's granddaughter. Julie Stuart, is it? Och, aye, Lady Julia! Well then, Lady Julia, tell me -- who don't you deserve a glass of water?
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A part of me will always be unflyable, stuck in the climb.
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I need complicated railroad journeys and people speaking to me in foreign languages to keep me happy. I want to see the world and write stories about everything I see.
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Doing the thing you are scared of is much harder than not being afraid of anything. It is easy to be brave. It is not so easy to be scared and do a brave thing anyway.
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I don't recognise any of my emotions any more. There's no such thing as plain joy or grief. It's horror and relief and panic and gratitude all jumbled together.
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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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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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Must stop. This ink is amazing, it really doesn't smear, even when you cry on it.
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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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Incredible what slender threads you begin to hang your hopes on.
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She gave a low and delighted chuckle. Her eyes were black as a moonless December night and reflected the electric lights like stars.