It’s awful, telling it like this, isn’t it? As though we didn’t know the ending. As though it could have another ending. It’s like watching Romeo drink poison. Every time you see it you get fooled into thinking his girlfriend might wake up and stop him. Every single time you see it you want to...

It’s not unreal to me yet, though it might get that way soon. It still feels very real. And not even horrible — the dead are just the dead. I am convinced that the living people they once were would have been proud of their protective bodies hoodwinking their murderers to save someone else. [..]...

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.

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

You know, it set you at war with yourself.

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...

I’M SCOTTISH!

Julie would have died there.

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

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...

These are just stories, you know. They are part of what we are, but they are not the real thing. All this year I’ve been thinking, What would White Raven do? And today, every time I thought it, I just didn’t care what White Raven would do. So today I’ve just done what I would...

You can’t just sit in a corner weeping or you’ll die.

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.

What’s strange about the whole thing is that although it’s riddled with nonsense, altogether it’s true – Julie’s told our story, mine and hers, our friendship, so truthfully. It is us. We even had the same dream at the same time. How could we have had the same dream at the same time? How can...

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.

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

Queenie, herself again, took hold of Maddie’s hand and squeezed it tightly. She walked all the way back across the airfield without letting it go. Maddie closed her eyes and flew again in the ethereal pale green light. She knew she would never let it go.

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 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...

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.

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.

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

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...

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

Taran. We go down fighting.

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