I’m not really the sacrificing type.

He scooped up my arm, swung me round. “Let go, Cecil,” I said. “I’ve a strange dislike of being forced.” “But Briony,” he said, “I’m so full of good spirits. I could walk to London, I think!” Why didn’t he?

It's one thing to keep secrets. It's quite another to lie.

I still can't understand how Cecil and my old tutor, Fitz, got along so well, when we often called Fitz 'the Genius' and avoided calling Cecil anything at all, so as not to be rude.

Secrets press inside a person. They press the way water presses at a dam. The secrets and the water, they both want to get out.

If you say a word, it leaps out and becomes the truth. I love you. I believe it. I believe I am loveable. How can something as fragile as a word build a whole world?

Perhaps you should put your head down.” I knew this was the thing to do, although I’ve never fainted and I don’t intend to.