But it was too interesting, too new, too flattering, too deeply comforting to resist, it was a liberation to be in love and say so, and she could only let herself go deeper.

I'm holding back, delaying the information. I'm lingering in the prior moment because it was a time when other outcomes were still possible.

For the professors in the academy, for the humanities generally, misery is more amenable to analysis: happiness is a harder nut to crack.

...falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance.

Briony began to understand the chasm that lay between an idea and its execution.

Finally, you had to measure yourself by other people - there really was nothing else. every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone taught you something about yourself.

A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.