“She hasn't had a book to read lately and that feeling of story rushes through her like a swoon.”

“Maybe reading was just a way to make her feel less alone, to keep her company. When you read something you are stopped, the moment is stayed, you can sometimes be there more fully than you can in your real life.”

“Every story is a story about death. But perhaps, if we are lucky, our story about death is also a story about love.”

“I'm beginning to feel as though everything has happened before, that our story has already been told. Just as we were powerless to stop the fox stealing the chicken, so there seems to be an inevitability to all that takes place at Mosel. This is a ghost story. And we have somehow become the ghosts of these young men who worked this estate before the Great War. The living are the dead.”

“It's as if I've never seen Jane before, never known her. With just an undervest on, she looks unbelievably thin. Arms no wider than the sticks of a bower. A collarbone protuding from the skin in all its detail. And with that one gesture, I learn the fundamental truth of her. When she takes off her sweater and, without thinking, hands it over to David to use as wool, I can see how Jane loves. And I know -with all my heart I know- that there is no protection in the world for someone who loves like that.”

“She believes in the words of her fortune teller, but really, anyone could have told her that if you have to stop doing the thing you love, it will kill you.”

“When a writer writes, it's as if she holds the sides of her chest apart, exposes her beating heart. And even though everything wants to heal, to close over and protect the heart, the writer must keep it bare, exposed.”