Quotes from Elizabeth Wein

Hope has no feathers Hope takes flight tethered with twine like a tattered kite, slave to the wind's capricious drift eager to soar but needing lift Hope waits stubbornly watching the sky for turmoil, feeding on things that fly: crows, ashes, newspapers, dry leaves in flight all suggest wind that could lift a kite Hope sails and plunges firmly caught at the end of her string - fallen slack, pulling taught, ragged and featherless. Hope never flies but doggedly watches for windy skies.

Incredible. It is just incredible that you can notice something like that when your face is so cold you can't feel it anymore, and you know perfectly well you are surrounded by death, and the only way to stay alive is to endure the howling wind and hold your course. And still the sky is beautiful.

It never occurred to him that now he was looking at his master, at the one person in all the world who held his fate right between her palms - me, in patched hand-me-downs and untrimmed hair and idiot smile - and that my hatred for him is pure and black and unforgiving. And that I don't believe in God, but if I did, if I did, it would be the God of Moses, angry and demanding and OUT FOR REVENGE...

Bloody Machiavellian English Intelligence Officer playing God

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.

These trials aren't about revenge. They're about justice. Don't you want justice , Rose Justice?

That is a terrifically intimate thing, you know? Letting a stranger light your cigarette. Leaning forward so he can hold a flame to your lips. Pausing to breathe in before you pull back again.

It had never occurred to me that simply being with a fellow prisoner would make me feel like I was still in prison.

People are complicated. There is so much more to everybody than you realise.

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.

If you show this devious little liar one atom's worth of compassion I will have you shot.

Jamie let go of me. "Shut your mucky gob, man." He stepped close to our fearless leader in the dark, took hold of his jacket by the collar, and in a dead quiet voice that had gone dangerously Scots, threatened heatedly, "Talk like that again wi' these brave lassies listenin' an' Ah'll tear the filthy English tongue frae yer heid, so Ah will.

High time they put the RAF in kilts.

It was wonderful flirting with him, all the razor-edged literary banter, like Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. A battle of wit, and a test, too.

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.

I love the story of a thing. I love a thing for what it means a thousand times more than for what it's worth.

I am in the Special Operations Executive because I can speak French and German and am good at making up stories, and I am a prisoner in the Ormaie Gestapo HQ because I have no sense of direction whatsoever.

I loved that phrase: soul mate. We asked Grandma what it meant and she said, 'Two people who understand each other without talking about it. Two halves of a whole.

Queenie was devoted to careless name-dropping, scattering the details of her privileged upbringing without the faintest hint of modesty or embarrassment (though, after a while Maddie began to realize she only did it with people she liked or people she detested--those who didn't mind and those she didn't care about--anyone in between, or who might have been offended, she was more cautious with).

Southampton's barrage balloons floated gleaming in the moonlight like the ghosts of elephants and hippos.

I have nothing to lose. I am going to dare it. I will aim for the sun.

Maddie took the top of her egg off. The hot bright yolk was like summer sun breaking through cloud. The first daffodil in the snow. A gold sovereign wrapped in a white silk handkerchief. She dipped her spoon in it and licked it.

She gave me a dirty look. Then she broke into the bubbly champagne laugh. She turned and ran, limping but steady. She laughed over her shoulder, letting out the line as I held the kite above my head. "Run with me, Rose," she cried.

The fuss made over the chickens at the checkpoints is not to be believed. Unlike me they had their own papers.