“He tasted of whisky and his skin was rough where he hadnt shaved, but Mirabelle kissed him back.”

“Didnt 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.”

“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 wasnt true.”

“Vesta was so good with paperwork you could hand her a file of drab, seemingly dull information and shed construct a story from it worthy of a novel.”

“Food in wartime Britain, she had to admit, was hardly inspiring.”

“Our archives are treasure troves - a testament to many lives lived and the complexity of the way we move forward. They contain clues to the real concerns of day-to-day life that bring the past alive.”

“Archive material is vital to the writer of historical fiction.”

“Let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them b...”

“Sometimes I feel like we're a knot, too tangled to be taken apart.”

“Memories of lost love they do enpain,Fleeting images of what once was never again to gain.Hold tight those memories that slip through the mind, To walk in those fields again with hera dream divi...”

“As she left the cold arena Angel had to laugh,Beaten by that of a wisp girl and her subliming cunning craft.Jove lay silent in his orbit; brooding, deep, dreamless forweep,And faithful dog Sirius r...”

“But who can remember pain, once its over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In lif...”

“My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it's operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely ...”