Elizabeth Wein Quotes
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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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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 am quite Pan-like in my naïve confidence that he will play by the rules and keep his word.
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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.
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Things became more civilized all of a sudden. Coffee does that. Or maybe it is women who do that.
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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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Looking up at the stars and smoking in silence.
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Ellen looked around the room with an odd expression, for the first few seconds not taking in the collection spread across the tables, but just taking in the library: the smell of ink and foxy paper and old wood, the green view of the river beyond the leaded casement window propped open just an inch. As if she loved it, but was a little scared to be there.
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Lucky for me I didn’t know. Why lucky for her? Not lucky for the people she was protecting, but lucky for Róża. She didn’t have to choose.
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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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I think that what I do is a form of pathetic fallacy, the literary trope in which nature is in sympathy with the mood of the story. I connect the physical setting and props in the story to the emotional state of the characters.
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Incredible what slender threads you begin to hang your hopes on.
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It is possible there are some things you want so badly that you will change your life to make them happen.
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Even when you’re flying high and steady, the weight doesn’t go away—it’s just balanced by lift. I have worked pretty hard over the past year and a half to keep my life in balance. But the weight’s still there, waiting for an increase in gravity to pull me earthward again.
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It's impossible to stall a Lizzie.
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And this, even more wonderful and mysterious, is also true: when I read it, when I read what Julie's written, she is instantly alive again, whole and undamaged. With her words in my mind while I'm reading, she is as real as I am. Gloriously daft, drop-dead charming, full of bookish nonsense and foul language, brave and generous. She's right here. Afraid and exhausted, alone, but fighting. Flying in silver moonlight in a plane that can't be landed, stuck in the climb—alive, alive, ALIVE.
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It's very modern. Very gamine. You look like a jazz singer.
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She whispered, 'C'etait la Verite?' Was that Verity? Or perhaps she just meant, Was that the truth? Was it true? Did any of it really happen? Were the last three hours real? 'Yes,' I whispered back. 'Oui. C'etait la verite.
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I sometimes think young people are not given nearly enough credit for their ability to appreciate literary flourish.
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A part of me will always be unflyable, stuck in the climb.
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A poet and a doctor. Maybe I could. This the first thought I have of it. Maybe I could.
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But more often than not the missing face has been sucked into the engines of the Nazi death machine, like an unlucky lapwing hitting the propeller of a Lancaster bomber-nothing left but feathers blowing away in the aircraft's wake, as if those warm wings and beating heart had never existed.
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It makes you very uncomfortable to realize that your emotional attachment to something is an indulgence.