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.

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

Grief, she reminded herself, is almost always for the mourner's loss.

You were born to be amazing.

Polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.

Those who choose, conduct, present, and accompany the music may influence the spirit of reverence ... more than a speaker does.

I always learned to be philanthropic... to give back.

Logic is in the eye of the logician.

If you live your life burning for the highest possibility, in that burning itself, there is liberation.

What better reward than to see others excited by your work?

Marriage is a formality, a legal bondage. Love is of the heart; marriage is of the mind. That's why I am never in favor of marriage.

Ill health is an important factor that forces the poor to remain poor. If they make a little bit of money, one episode of illness can wipe them out.