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

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.

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.

One of my assets is my fitness. My fitness around the net and my movement: that's my defense to the power.

Teachers are more than any other group the guardians of civilization.

Because what nobody ever understood is that I, too, wanted to be a somebody. But how do you go through life wanting to be a someone and not knowing how?

If you're going to succeed, you've got to be like one of those punch-drunk fighters in the old Warner Bros. boxing pictures: too stupid to fall down, you just keep slugging and stay on your feet.

Peace for any prolonged period of time is impossible. Humans have a natural thirst for chaos and war is the most readily available form of chaos.

Time waste differs from material waste in that there can be no salvage.

I'm a true believer in prayer, a big believer in prayer.

The funny thing is, London is an incredibly interesting city. It's very sexy and it's very different, with the Thames winding through it like a snake.

The desire to be a free person is very worthwhile. To be free means you are no longer the victim of fear, anger, craving, or suspicion.

The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he is born.