A girl expecting rescue never learns to save herself. Even with the means, she will find her courage wanting.

Oh, there was harm indeed for a young lady flattered by the brief attentions of a handsome man.

It was such a pleasure to sink one's hands into the warm earth, to feel at one's fingertips the possibilities of the new season.

She doesn't know I cry for the changing times. That just as I reread favourite books, some small part of me hoping for a different ending, I find myself hoping against hope that the war will never come. That this time, somehow, it will leave us be.

Adults weren’t supposed to understand their children and you were doing something wrong if they did.

Nighttime is different. Things are otherwise when the world is black. Insecurities and hurts, anxieties and fears grow teeth at night. p493

But history is a faithless teller whose cruel recourse to hindsight makes fools of its actors.