I turned the pages so fast. And I suppose I was, in my mindless way, looking for a something, version of myself, a heroine I could slip inside as one might a pair of favourite shoes.
What was it with men, that they found elementary logic so difficult?
Novels without female characters were a lifeless desert.
Love doesn’t grow at a steady rate, but advances in surges, bolts, wild leaps, and this was one of those.
At the back of my mind I had a sense of us sitting about waiting for some terrible event, and then I would remember that it had already happened.
Let the guilty bury the innocent, and let no one change the evidence.
Writers are said to have superstitions and little rituals. Readers have them too.
Oblivion seemed the only reasonable option.
What can it be about low temperatures that sharpens the edges of objects?
Observing human variety can give pleasure, but so too can human sameness.
I like to think that it isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair,...
When they kissed she immediately felt his tongue, tensed and strong, pushing past her teeth, like some bully shouldering his way into a room. Entering her.
He knew these last lines by heart and mouthed them now in the darkness. My reason for life. Not living, but life. That was the touch. And she was his reason for life, and why he must survive.
Especially difficult when the first and best unconscious move of a dedicated liar is to persuade himself he’s sincere. And once he’s sincere, all deception vanishes.
If life was a dream, then dying must be the moment when you woke up. It was so simple it must be true. You died, the dream was over, you woke up. That’s what people meant when they talked about going to heaven. It was like waking up.
He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit.
We know so little about each other. We lie mostly submerged, like ice floes, with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white.
Briony began to understand the chasm that lay between an idea and its execution.
We go on our hands and knees and crawl our way towards the truth.
Above all, she wanted to look as though she had not given the matter a moment’s thought, and that would take time.