I like to think that each book I start is a completely new departure But I’ve learned that whatever you do, readers will have no difficulty assimilating it into what you’ve done before.

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

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

Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?

At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.

A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.

Observing human variety can give pleasure, but so too can human sameness.