Quotes from Jacqueline Winspear

It is interesting, Maisie, how a time of war can give a human being purpose. Especially when that purpose, that power, so to speak, is derived from something so essentially evil.

Yet the alternative he had suggested smacked of privilege, and wasn't privilege always bolstered by a discrimination of sorts?

In your mercy, Lord, give them rest. When you come to judge the living and the dead, give them rest. Eternal rest grant to them, O Lord, And let perpetual light shine upon them; in your mercy, Lord. Give them rest.

And she will be with children who come from a real mix of places and who have moved around a bit. They're used to it. They're all . . . well, I guess they're habituated to being different. Which means they're accustomed to finding out all the things that make them the same as one another, and yet they take their individuality in their stride.

I see how the gaping abyss between those who have much and those who have nothing can cause dangerous fractures in society. I see how power corrupts, how the people are manipulated and kept in their place. I

And so another storyteller fell asleep that night thinking not of the telling of the story but of the possibilities inherent in color and texture

when she was the silent observer as he listened to a story, gently prodding with a question, a comment, a sigh, or a smile, "The story takes up space as a knot in a piece of wood. If the knot is removed, a hole remains. We must ask ourselves, how will this hole that we have opened be filled? The hole, Maisie, is our responsibility.

Grannies to the rescue.

the power of the question was in the question itself? He'd taught her that one must let a question linger in the mind as one might savor wine on the tongue, and he'd cautioned that a rush to answer could diminish all chance of insight. Indeed, if one continually avoided questions by trying to answer them immediately, such impatience would become a barrier on the path to greater knowledge of oneself.

Trouble is, your best ain't always the best for those who want a say in the matter.

Theirs was a laughter fueled not by pressure from others, nor by alcohol or the whims of a partying crowd, but by a certain optimism that, even in the midst of the difficult times in which they lived, they had grasped a sense of possibility before it slipped through their fingers.

Extremes live within us all. The joy of association resides alongside the anticipation of loss. What is given will be taken, what we have is often only of value to us when it is gone." He paused, his face now held to the light once more.

There's all the others, but not the one. And having that one is special.

work in tandem—and that means we pedal in different directions, most

But you just know when someone's there, don't you? You can feel them in the house, as if--oh, I don't know, I'm an old woman rambling--but it's as if your heart knows that their heart is beating somewhere and everything's all right.

She knew the worries that came to the fore at night were the ones you had to pay attention to, for they blurred reasoned thought, sucked clarity from any consideration of one's situation, and could lead a mind around in circles, leaving one drained and ill-tempered. And if there was no one close with whom to discuss those concerns, they grew in importance in the imagination, whether they were rooted in good sense or not.

American Du Pont Merrimac Town Car

With the hindsight of the worldly experience she had since acquired, it was clear to Maisie that Dame Constance had suffered fools, if not gladly, then with gracious ease.

Life is a riddle, my dear. It is filled with clues along the way, with messages we struggle to understand. You've been working on the case of a cartographer; you should know that all maps are drawn in hindsight. And hindsight, if interpreted with care, is what brings us wisdom.

My child, when a mountain appears on the journey, we try to go to the left, then to the right; we try to find the easy way to navigate our way back to the easier path. He paused. But the mountain is there to be crossed. It is on that pilgrimage, as we climb higher, that we are forced to shed the layers upon layers we have carried for so long. Then we find that our load is lighter and we have come to know something of ourselves in the perilous climb.

You know, Maisie, that when you look at one of these politicians, you're looking at a thief, a liar and a murderer, that's the way I see it." "Come on, Dad, that's not like you." "No, I mean it. Look—they take our money, they lie through their teeth, and then they send our boys off to their deaths, don't they? And all the time, they're in clover, never a day's risk or a day wanting.

with Fascist leanings; anything to save the upper classes through disenfranchisement of the common man while allowing the common man to think you're on his side.

on by whatever it is he's

Bombers were the dark crows of death, sent out to lay their eggs on an unsuspecting world.