Best 74 quotes of Elizabeth Wein on MyQuotes

And I envied her that she had chosen her work herself and was doing what she wanted to do. I don't suppose I had any idea what I 'wanted' and so I was chosen, not choosing. There's glory and honor in being chosen. But not much room for free will.

A part of me will always be unflyable, stuck in the climb.

But a part of me lies buried in lace and roses on a riverbank in France-a part of me is broken off forever. A part of me will be unflyable, stuck in the climb.

But I have told the truth. Isn't that ironic? They sent me because I am so good at telling lies. But I have told the truth.

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.

Fight with realistic hope, not to destroy all the world's wrong, but to renew its good.

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.

God knows what I thought! Your brain does amazing acrobatics when it doesn't want to believe something.

He just put his hand through the bulkhead, exactly as she'd done, and squeezed my shoulder. He has very strong fingers. And he kept his hand there the whole way home, even when he was reading the map and giving me headings. So I am not flying alone now after all.

Hope is the most treacherous thing in the world. It lifts you and lets you plummet. But as long as you're being lifted you don't worry about plummeting.

How did you ever get here, Maddie Brodatt?" "'Second to the right, and then straight on till morning,'" she answered promptly-it did feel like Neverland. "Crikey, am I so obviously Peter Pan?" Maddie laughed. "The Lost Boys give it away." Jamie studied his hands. "Mother keeps the windows open in all our bedrooms while we're gone, like Mrs. Darling, just in case we come flying home when she's not expecting us.

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.

Incredible what slender threads you begin to hang your hopes on.

I sometimes think young people are not given nearly enough credit for their ability to appreciate literary flourish.

I tend not to attempt to describe pain. I don't feel I can comprehend or re-create the personal suffering of others, so I simply try to tell what happened, or what I imagine happened. I also think it helps to let the reader fill in a lot of the blanks. Melodrama is patronizing. With a straightforward statement, readers can figure out for themselves what's going on.

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.

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.

It's an illusion I've noticed before-- words on a page are like oxygen to a petrol engine, firing up ghosts. It only lasts while the words are in your head. After you put down the paper or pen, the pistons fall lifeless again.

It's like being in love, discovering your best friend.

It was a rather extraordinary conversation if you think about it -- both of us speaking in code. But not military code, not Intelligence or Resistance code -- just feminine code.

Kiss me, Hardy!’ Weren’t those Nelson’s last words at the Battle of Trafalgar? Don’t cry. We’re still alive and we make a sensational team.

Look at me!’ I screeched. ‘Look at me, Amadeus von Linden, you sadistic hypocrite, and watch this time! You’re not questioning me now, this isn’t your work, I’m not an enemy agent spewing wireless code! I’m just a minging Scots slag screaming insults at your daughter! So enjoy yourself and watch! Think of Isolde! Think of Isolde and watch!

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.

Must stop. This ink is amazing, it really doesn't smear, even when you cry on it

Nothing like an arcane literary debate with your tyrannical master while you pass the time leading to your execution.

Oh Julie, wouldn’t I know if you were dead? Wouldn’t I feel it happening, like a jolt of electricity to my heart?

One moment flying in green sunlight, then the sky suddenly grey and dark.

Please come back soon. The window is always open.

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

There is only one reason I did not go down in flames over the Angers, and that is because I knew I had Julie in the back. Would never have had the presence of mind to put that fire out if I hadn't been trying to save her life.

There’s glory and honour in being chosen. But not much room for free will

There were no route maps posted on the walls, but a Wonderland-style sign commanding, 'If you know where you are, then please tell others.

The very term "turning pages" suggests nonstop action. But I am all about character and beautiful writing. I eat that up like popcorn. Whether a book is action-packed or not, all I need are well-written prose and quirky, fabulous characters to keep me going.

Von Loewe really should know me well enough by now to realize that I am not going to face my execution without a fight. Or with anything remotely resembling dignity.

We are a sensational team.

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.

Don't know how I kept going. You just do. You have to, so you do.

Driving like a man is one of her few foibles.

Her own hair was a glory of copper fire that morning, shining like a whisky still, long and loose in gentle flames down her back.

How does she do it? She makes it sound like she is so cut up to be giving them this information, and it's all just bumph out of her head. She never told them ANYTHING. I don't think she's given them the right name of any airfield in Britain except Mainsend and Buscot, which of course were where she was stationed. They could have easily checked. It's all so close to truth, and so glib--her aircraft identification is rather good considering what a fuss she makes about it. It makes me think of the first day I met her, giving those directions in German. So cool and crisp, such authority--suddenly she really was a radio operator, a German radio operator, she was so good at faking it. Or when I told her to be Jamie, how she just suddenly turned into Jamie. This confession of hers is rotten with error...

How do you ever hold on to anybody?

I am like a ruined piece of parchment scrawled over and over again with your name, so many times it has become illegible.

I don't believe for a minute-that we wouldn't have become friends somehow-that an unexploded bomb wouldn't have gone off and blown us both into the same crater, or that God himself wouldn't have come along and knocked our heads together in a flash of green sunlight. But it wouldn't have been likely.

I ken who you are! You're Strathfearn's granddaughter. Julie Stuart, is it? Och, aye, Lady Julia! Well then, Lady Julia, tell me -- who don't you deserve a glass of water?

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'M SCOTTISH!

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.

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.

Inspector Milne's suspicious prying appeared to have awakened her inner Bolshevik, and so I discovered my own lady mother is not above quietly circumventing the law.

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.