Afternoon drinkers shifted in the gloom as if they sensed new blood.

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.

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

Realism is knowing fantasy and reality intersect constantly. Realism is living with the awareness that every act changes the world.

To swear day and night by media slander will make one a bigger victim than the slandered. It doesn't take much to begin to fear a mere illusion of human badness.

I've concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn't dollars but the individual people whose lives I've touched.

If life is to be sustained, hope must remain.

He that is over-cautious will accomplish but very little.

I’d give him a cup of coffee and a big helping of a knuckle sandwich. Generosity was a virtue and I was in the mood to be extremely virtuous.

You don't go to Berkeley to become an actor. In fact, I don't think you go to any school to become an actor. You've just sort of got to go out there and act.

What would you be like if you were the only person in the world? If you want to be truly happy you must be that person.

There's a reason why actors are always dying to work with the Coens. They just set the stage for you to do their best work.

When you are here and now, sitting totally, not jumping ahead, the miracle has happened. To be in the moment is the miracle.