“Perspective was my secret weapon, and books gave me plenty of ammunition.”

“People don't live in New Orleans because it is easy. They live here because they are incapable of living anywhere else in the just same way.”

“Evil grows richest in a soul most pure.”

“[Mr. Sullivan to Mrs Sullivan]"I'm a very popular man, plenty of friends, and I can move in any circle and I'm always a perfect gentleman. I'd have plenty of friends if it wasn't for you. And you talk about being humiliated by me. People think you are queer, that's what people think about you”

“Every secret of the body was rendered up--bone risen through flesh, sacrilegious glimpses of an intestine or an optic nerve. From this new and intimate perspective, [Briony] learned a simple, obvious thing she had always known, and everyone knew: that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended.”

“She reminded me of a picture in a history book of the executioner who killed on of the kings.”

“I accidentally brought my graphing calculator camping.”