Elizabeth Wein Quotes
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When you’re flying, the changing balance of lift and weight pulls you up or down. But another pair of forces pulls you forward or backward through the air: thrust and drag. Thrust is the power that pulls the kite forward—you run with it to get it up in the air. You have to have thrust to create lift. Drag is there because your kite’s surfaces push against the air and slow the kite down. Drag doesn’t pull you out of the sky; it makes you fly more slowly.
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Spiderwebs joined together can catch a lion.
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A whore, we've established that, filthy, it goes without saying, but whatever else the hell I am, I AM NOT ENGLISH.
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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.
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How can you grow to love a handful of strangers so fiercely just because you have to sleep on the same couple of wooden planks with them, when half the time you were there you wanted to strangle them, and all you ever talked about is death and imaginary strawberries?
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Please come back soon. The window is always open.
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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.
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I realized I would be forced to run away from home if someone tried to arrange a marriage for me. I didn't want to think about it.
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Mary Queen of Scots had a little dog, a Skye terrier, that was devoted to her. Moments after Mary was beheaded, the people who were watching saw her skirts moving about and they thought her headless body was trying to get itself to its feet. But the movement turned out to be her dog, which she had carried to the block with her, hidden in her skirts. Mary Stuart is supposed to have faced her execution with grace and courage (she wore a scarlet chemise to suggest she was being martyred), but I don’t think she could have been so brave if she had not secretly been holding tight to her Skye terrier, feeling his warm, silky fur against her trembling skin.
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Careless talk costs lives.
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Taran. We go down fighting.
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It's like being in love, discovering your best friend.
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...unless you were doing them a favor by killing them. Then, you'd let them down if you didn't, if you couldn't make yourself.
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Where I fail in accuracy, I hope I make up for it in plausibility.
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For the pleasure of giving, because what's the point of just having? If I give a thing, I remember how happy we both were when I made the gift.
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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.
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If I am very lucky - I mean if I am clever about it - I will get myself shot. Here, soon.
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You can come back to friendship. You can let it drop, for five years or ten years, and come back to it.
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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.
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There’s glory and honour in being chosen. But not much room for free will.
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The quick, sudden terror of exploding bombs is not the same as the never-ending, bone-sapping fear of discovery and capture. It never goes away. There isn’t ever any relief, never the possibility of an ‘All Clear’ siren. You always feel a little bit sick inside, knowing the worst might happen at any moment.
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I AM A COWARD.
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The fuss made over the chickens at the checkpoints is not to be believed. Unlike me they had their own papers.
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Maddie quickly pulled down the blackout curtains over her bright and vulnerable soul.