Jacqueline Winspear

“I'll tell you this. Leaving that which you love breaks your heart open. But you will find a jewel inside, and this precious jewel is the opening of your heart to all that is new and all that is different, and it will be the making of you-if you allow it to be.”

“And you think journeying abroad will give you this knowledge you crave?I think it will contribute to my understanding of the world, of people.More so than say, the old lady who has lived in the same house her entire life, who has borne children both alive and dead? Who tends her soil; who sees the sun shine and the rain fall over the land, winter, spring, summer and autumn? What might you say to the idea that we all have a capacity for wisdom, just as a jug has room for a finite amount of water-pouring more water in the jug doesn't increase that capacity.”

“But there are many men-and women-who do things in a time of war that they wouldn't dream of doing in peacetime, and all for the common good.”

“My child, when a mountain appears on the journey, we try to go to the left, then to the right. We try to find the easy way to navigate our way back to the easier path.…. But the mountain is there to be crossed. It is on that pilgrimage, as we climb higher, that we are forced to shed the layers upon layers we have carried for so long. Then we find that our load is lighter, and we have come to know something of ourselves in the perilous climb…..Do not seek to avoid the mountain, my child. For it has been placed there at a perfect time. It will only become larger if you seek to delay or draw back from the ascent. ”

“And it occurred to her that she was so used to turning over everything in her mind, as if each thought were an intricate shell found at the beach, that she had never truly known the value of simply accepting things as they were.”

“Thus a day that had seen so many tears ended in the midst of a rainbow.”

“The extraordinary hides behind the camouflage of the ordinary. Assume nothing, Maisie.”

“... the vacuum left by the departing visitor seemed to echo along the hallway and into the walls. It was at those times, when her aloneness took on a darker hue, that she almost wished there would be no more guess, for then there would be no chasm of emptiness for her to negotiate when they were gone.”

“. . . if the way ahead is not clear, time is often the best editor of one's intentions.”

“Wolfgang von Goethe:"A man can stand anything, except a succession of ordinary days.”

“Though there had yet to be a victor in this great war that had begun almost three years ago, Maurice had written to her that they had, all of them, on all sides, lost their freedom. Freedom to think hopefully of the future.”

“She closed her eyes, silently continuing the pleas that she be given words that might soothe, words that would begin the healing of bereaved parents. She had seen, when she entered the kitchen, the chasm of sorrow that divided man and wife already, each deep in their own wretched suffering, neither knowing what to say to the other. She knew that to begin to talk about what had happened was a key to acknowledging their loss, and that such acceptance would in turn be a means to enduring the days and months ahead.”

“There is nothing of which every man is so afraid, as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.”

“The boy laughed, for he was a boy and not yet a man.”

“Some hae meat and canna eat, and some wad eat that want it. But we hae meat, and we can eat, Sae let the Lord be thankit.”

“And there's a thin line between genius and insanity, isn't there?”

“Suffice it to say that we only answer questions when the person asking has a lot of silver on the epaulettes, or around the peak of his cap.”

“The heart does not know chronos time, Maisie.”

“She would not allow someone for whom she had so little regard to have a negative effect on her mood at the start of a new week. -Pardonable Lies”

“Shame, isn’t it? That we only like our heroes out in the street when they are looking their best and their uniforms are ‘spit and polished,’ and not when they’re showing us the wounds they suffered on our behalf.”

“Memories are links in a golden chain that bind us until we meet again.”

“Truth walks towards us on the paths of our questions." [Dr. Maurice Blanche]”

“Grace isn't a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal. It's a way to live.”

“Coincidence is a messenger sent by truth.”

“Truth walks toward us on the paths of our questions...as soon as you think you have the answer, you have closed the path and may miss vital new information. Wait awhile in the stillness, and do not rush to conclusions, no matter how uncomfortable the unknowing.”

“She had always told herself that she did hti job because she wanted to help others; afterall, hadn't Maurice told her once that the most important question any individual could ask was, "How might I serve?" If her response to that question had been pure, surely she would have coninued with the calling to be a nurse.... But that role hadn't been quite enough for her. She would have missed the excitement, the thrill when she embarked on the work of collecting clues to support a case.”