Briony’s ladies-in-waiting kept their distance, as though their mistress had some illness which might spread – and indeed she did, Briony thought, because unhappiness was ambitious.

A book, you see, is the only kind of trap that keeps its captive – which is knowledge – alive forever.

What, you don’t have a sofa gun? I thought everyone did.

You dream too much, child. Our kind, we make our way with strong backs and closed mouths.

He has about him still a kind of terrible beauty, as dangerously beguiling as the grandeur of a storm rushing across the sea.

When you stopped to think about it, he reflected, there weren’t many things in life one truly needed. To want too much was worse than greed: it was stupidity – a waste of precious time and effort. The.

But that is enough of such worrying. The river is waiting, and our hearts must be light, so we can faster travel.

As he slipped away he heard his own cradled heartbeat, muffled though it was in the tickling wool of exhaustion.

Love. Tired old jokes aside, a real, powerful love does have one thing in common with Hell itself: it burns everything else out of you.

You see, that is the secret of history, little Briony – who tells the last story.