It's the essence of a degenerating mind periodically, to lose all sense of continuous self, and therefore any regard for what others think of your lack of continuity.

The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.

When people have supernatural beliefs I think they should be respected but there is no reason why they need to impose them on others.

He had never before felt so self-consciously young, nor experienced such appetite, such impatience for the story to begin.

I believe the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction. It is the beautiful daughter of a rambling, bloated ill-shaven giant (but a giant who's a genius on his best days).

She bent her finger and then straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge. She brought her forefinger closer to her face and stared at it, urging it to move. It remained still because she was pretending... . And when she did crook it finally, the action seemed to start in the finger itself, not in some part of her mind.

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