Elizabeth Wein Quotes

How do you ever hold on to anybody?

~ Elizabeth Wein

She gave a low and delighted chuckle. Her eyes were black as a moonless December night and reflected the electric lights like stars.

~ Elizabeth Wein

Looking up at the stars and smoking in silence.

~ Elizabeth Wein

Oh Julie, wouldn’t I know if you were dead? Wouldn’t I feel it happening, like a jolt of electricity to my heart?

~ Elizabeth Wein

Mary Queen of Scots had a little dog, a Skye terrier, that was devoted to her. Moments after Mary was beheaded, the people who were watching saw her skirts moving about and they thought her headless body was trying to get itself to its feet. But the movement turned out to be her dog, which she had carried to the block with her, hidden in her skirts. Mary Stuart is supposed to have faced her execution with grace and courage (she wore a scarlet chemise to suggest she was being martyred), but I don’t think she could have been so brave if she had not secretly been holding tight to her Skye terrier, feeling his warm, silky fur against her trembling skin.

~ Elizabeth Wein

If you're scared, do something.

~ Elizabeth Wein

But people need lift, too. People don't get moving, they don't soar, they don't achieve great heights, without someone buoying them up.

~ Elizabeth Wein

Look at me!’ I screeched. ‘Look at me, Amadeus von Linden, you sadistic hypocrite, and watch this time! You’re not questioning me now, this isn’t your work, I’m not an enemy agent spewing wireless code! I’m just a minging Scots slag screaming insults at your daughter! So enjoy yourself and watch! Think of Isolde! Think of Isolde and watch!

~ Elizabeth Wein

There’s glory and honour in being chosen. But not much room for free will

~ Elizabeth Wein

I realized I would be forced to run away from home if someone tried to arrange a marriage for me. I didn't want to think about it.

~ Elizabeth Wein

The wave of memory had submerged me for a whole minute, while I'd just sat staring and let it all come flooding back.

~ Elizabeth Wein

Don't know how I kept going. You just do. You have to, so you do.

~ Elizabeth Wein

It was wonderful flirting with him, all the razor-edged literary banter, like Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. A battle of wit, and a test, too.

~ Elizabeth Wein

How does she do it? She makes it sound like she is so cut up to be giving them this information, and it's all just bumph out of her head. She never told them ANYTHING. I don't think she's given them the right name of any airfield in Britain except Mainsend and Buscot, which of course were where she was stationed. They could have easily checked. It's all so close to truth, and so glib--her aircraft identification is rather good considering what a fuss she makes about it. It makes me think of the first day I met her, giving those directions in German. So cool and crisp, such authority--suddenly she really was a radio operator, a German radio operator, she was so good at faking it. Or when I told her to be Jamie, how she just suddenly turned into Jamie.This confession of hers is rotten with error...

~ Elizabeth Wein

I need complicated railroad journeys and people speaking to me in foreign languages to keep me happy. I want to see the world and write stories about everything I see.

~ Elizabeth Wein

It is possible there are some things you want so badly that you will change your life to make them happen.

~ Elizabeth Wein

I am like a ruined piece of parchment scrawled over and over again with your name, so many times it has become illegible.

~ Elizabeth Wein

It had never occurred to me that simply being with a fellow prisoner would make me feel like I was still in prison.

~ Elizabeth Wein

I love the story of a thing. I love a thing for what it means a thousand times more than for what it's worth.

~ Elizabeth Wein

But a part of me lies buried in lace and roses on a riverbank in France-a part of me is broken off forever. A part of me will be unflyable, stuck in the climb.

~ Elizabeth Wein

Incredible. It is just incredible that you can notice something like that when your face is so cold you can't feel it anymore, and you know perfectly well you are surrounded by death, and the only way to stay alive is to endure the howling wind and hold your course. And still the sky is beautiful.

~ Elizabeth Wein

And I envied her that she had chosen her work herself and was doing what she wanted to do. I don't suppose I had any idea what I 'wanted' and so I was chosen, not choosing. There's glory and honor in being chosen. But not much room for free will.

~ Elizabeth Wein

These are just stories, you know. They are part of what we are, but they are not the real thing. All this year I’ve been thinking, What would White Raven do? And today, every time I thought it, I just didn’t care what White Raven would do. So today I’ve just done what I would do. I’ve just done what I think is right. I’m not going to stop making up stories. But I’m thinking now that they aren’t just for pretending to be someone else, someone more exciting, someone braver than you really are. They are not always jut a maze to get lost in so you can run away from life. They can just as well be maps to help you navigate.

~ Elizabeth Wein

Driving like a man is one of her few foibles.

~ Elizabeth Wein

Inspector Milne's suspicious prying appeared to have awakened her inner Bolshevik, and so I discovered my own lady mother is not above quietly circumventing the law.

~ Elizabeth Wein

I ken who you are! You're Strathfearn's granddaughter. Julie Stuart, is it? Och, aye, Lady Julia! Well then, Lady Julia, tell me -- who don't you deserve a glass of water?

~ Elizabeth Wein

Och, they suit you, Queenie! Promise me you'll wear them.

~ Elizabeth Wein

You can't just sit in a corner weeping or you'll die.

~ Elizabeth Wein

It's not unreal to me yet, though it might get that way soon. It still feels very real. And not even horrible -- the dead are just the dead. I am convinced that the living people they once were would have been proud of their protective bodies hoodwinking their murderers to save someone else. [..] But it's not civilized. There is something indecent about it -- really foully indecent. The civilized Rose-person in me, who still seems to exist beneath the layers of filth, knows this. [..] I have become so indifferent about the dead.

~ Elizabeth Wein

Southampton's barrage balloons floated gleaming in the moonlight like the ghosts of elephants and hippos.

~ Elizabeth Wein

That is a terrifically intimate thing, you know? Letting a stranger light your cigarette. Leaning forward so he can hold a flame to your lips. Pausing to breathe in before you pull back again.

~ Elizabeth Wein