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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.
Elizabeth Wein -
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.
Elizabeth Wein
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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.
Elizabeth Wein -
People are complicated. There is so much more to everybody than you realize. You see someone in school everyday, or at work, in the canteen, and you share a cigarette of a coffee with them, and you talk about the weather or last night's air raid. But you don't talk so much about what was the nastiest thing you ever said to your mother, or how you pretended to be David Balfour, the hero of Kidnapped, for the whole of the year when you were 13, or what you imagine yourself doing with the pilot who looks like Leslie Howard if you were alone in his bunk after a dance.
Elizabeth Wein -
These trials aren't about revenge. They're about justice. Don't you want justice, Rose Justice?
Elizabeth Wein -
Maddie held her lightly, thinking she would let go when her friend stopped crying. But she cried for so long that Maddie fell asleep first. So she didn't ever let go.
Elizabeth Wein -
The soaring mountains rose around her, and the poets’ waters glittered beneath her in the valleys of memory—hosts of golden daffodils, Swallows and Amazons, Peter Rabbit.
Elizabeth Wein -
It is possible there are some things you want so badly that you will change your life to make them happen.
Elizabeth Wein
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This is what’s so heartbreaking: the fact that I am here, alive, has no doubt given Fernande some grain of hope for her daughter. But the fact that I was there makes me sure there isn’t any.
Elizabeth Wein -
Here he comes, moving among the enemies all on his own. Do you see? He acts alone, but he is not alone. He has an army behind him, also, my army; and with our lives we will fight to defend him.
Elizabeth Wein -
You can come back to friendship. You can let it drop, for five years or ten years, and come back to it.
Elizabeth Wein -
If I am very lucky - I mean if I am clever about it - I will get myself shot. Here, soon.
Elizabeth Wein -
A whore, we've established that, filthy, it goes without saying, but whatever else the hell I am, I AM NOT ENGLISH.
Elizabeth Wein -
The anticipation of what they will do to you is every bit as sickening in a dream as when it is really going to happen.
Elizabeth Wein
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It's like being in love, discovering your best friend.
Elizabeth Wein -
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.
Elizabeth Wein -
But people need lift, too. People don't get moving, they don't soar, they don't achieve great heights, without someone buoying them up.
Elizabeth Wein -
There’s glory and honour in being chosen. But not much room for free will.
Elizabeth Wein -
The ballpoint pen was invented by László Bíró, a Hungarian journalist who fled to Argentina to escape the German occupation of Europe. In 1943 he licensed his invention to the RAF, and the first ballpoint pens were manufactured in Reading, England, by the Miles aircraft manufacturer, to supply pilots with a lasting ink supply!
Elizabeth Wein -
It was a nightmare I could never really define, to have so many people packed around me and not be able to communicate with any of them unless they felt like it.
Elizabeth Wein
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Careless talk costs lives.
Elizabeth Wein -
I am like a ruined piece of parchment scrawled over and over again with your name, so many times it has become illegible.
Elizabeth Wein -
I felt like one who wants to trap and cage a little bird, and after years of waiting and luring and baiting finds that she must do no more than hold out her hand, and the finch lands on her finger and does not fly. You scarcely dare to move. It rests on your hand whole and free, foolishly trusting and infinitely courageous. It will never be more beautiful.
Elizabeth Wein -
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.
Elizabeth Wein