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.

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.

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.

Compromise brings harmony to both, happiness to none.

Good luck is the expression of your divinity within.

I mean, every thought starts over, so every expression of a thought has to do the same. every accuracy has to be invented... I feel I am blundering in concepts too fine for me.

British comedy - which has been a big inspiration to me for many years - is very different to Australian comedy and different again to American comedy.

I believe that to preach or to expound the scripture is to open up the inspired text with such faithfulness and sensitivity that God’s voice is heard and His people obey Him

You have only one life, make the most of it

I'm actually a softie. Tough guys get killed too early... I've got a full head of hair and don't wear eyeglasses.

Once I slapped a rapper with mace, Then I spit acid in his face, after he rinsed his eyes, no wait... I actually grew five times my size, grabbed Ma$e by the thigh and slapped a rapper with him.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.