Quotes by Elizabeth Wein

How do you ever hold on to anybody?

She gave a low and delighted chuckle. Her eyes were black as a moonless December night and reflected the electric lights like stars.

Looking up at the stars and smoking in silence.

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

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.

If youre scared, do something.

But people need lift, too. People dont get moving, they dont soar, they dont achieve great heights, without someone buoying them up.

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!

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

I realized I would be forced to run away from home if someone tried to arrange a marriage for me. I didnt want to think about it.

The wave of memory had submerged me for a whole minute, while Id just sat staring and let it all come flooding back.

Dont know how I kept going. You just do. You have to, so you do.

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.

How does she do it? She makes it sound like she is so cut up to be giving them this information, and its all just bumph out of her head. She never told them ANYTHING. I dont think shes 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. Its 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...

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.

It is possible there are some things you want so badly that you will change your life to make them happen.

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

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

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

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.