A chap’s impending death has a way of focusing the mind.

Jack had been the love of her life and he was gone. It seemed now that there had never been bad times, though she knew that wasn’t true.

Vesta was so good with paperwork – you could hand her a file of drab, seemingly dull information and she’d construct a story from it worthy of a novel.

Didn’t young people care what the generation before them had achieved? And if not, why had everyone gone through those grim difficult wartime years?

It was nearly ten years since the peace though her memories of the war still felt fresh.

Covert operations relied on the unguarded slip, the unconscious choosing of one word over another.

The good thing about the aristocracy – German or English – was that they were easily traced, Mirabelle thought.

This investigation felt difficult, like driving in fog.

Mirabelle was always an enigma, and he had the sense that if he pushed her, she’d bolt.

Food in wartime Britain, she had to admit, was hardly inspiring.

Parisians were not easy to engage in conversation. Perhaps that was why the Resistance had been so successful.

I am the bridge that connects these two ever- separated banks of human understanding.

Opposition doesn't mean to take arms and kill people and destroy everything.

Tidy fees are the most effective remedy, both for the doctor and the patient.

The more awesome you are, the more emotion you create, the more viral it is.

Theory, from whatever source, is not perfect until it is reduced to practice.

Let men not ask what the law requires, but give whatever freedom demands.

In general, our generals were outgeneralled.

I will do almost anything for the sake of a joke or for the sake of someone's real belief in something to help tell a story.

As the quality of water changes with the nature of the soil;So will a man's reason vary with the quality of his friends.

I consciously choose the dog's path through life. I shall be poor; I shall be a painter.