Famous Quotes & Sayings

Elizabeth Wein Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Elizabeth Wein.

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Famous Quotes By Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1294599

Each force in flight is balanced by an opposing force. The opposite of lift is weight. Weight is always trying to pull an object back to earth, so to get something to stay up, lift has to be greater than weight. You'd think your weight would always be the same, but it isn't. When you do aerobatics or go into a dive - like a kite that's plunging into the sand at the beach - there's an increase in gravity, and that makes you weigh more. If you want your heavy kite to stay in the air, you have to increase the lift, as well. Maybe by waiting for a stronger wind. Maybe by finding a windier place to fly your kite. Maddie brought lift back into my life by forcing me outside. So did Bob, who introduced me to the editors of this magazine. So did Fernande, the chambermaid at the Paris Ritz, who gave me her daughter's clothes and made me get dressed and brought me coffee every morning for three weeks. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1372639

But more often than not the missing face has been sucked into the engines of the Nazi death machine, like an unlucky lapwing hitting the propeller of a Lancaster bomber-nothing left but feathers blowing away in the aircraft's wake, as if those warm wings and beating heart had never existed. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1677667

Wait and hope, as I did while they took your arm off. I held my hand over your heart all through that final morning, so I could warn the surgeon of its faltering."

"Did it falter?"

"Not once. Nor will it falter now. Fly free, my brave one, my sunbird. Take back the sky. Do not be afraid. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 882507

A woman did that. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 2228887

Incredible what slender threads you begin to hang your hopes on. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 86575

Hope is the most treacherous thing in the world. It lifts you and lets you plummet. But as long as you're being lifted you don't worry about plummeting. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 515074

Taran. We go down fighting. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1807109

Five years of destruction and mayhem, lives lost everywhere, shortages of food and fuel and clothing - and the insane mind behind it just urges us all on and on to more destruction. And we all keep playing. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 841329

Things became more civilized all of a sudden. Coffee does that. Or maybe it is women who do that. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1678148

How did you ever get here, Maddie Brodatt?"
"'Second to the right, and then straight on till morning,'" she answered promptly-it did feel like Neverland.
"Crikey, am I so obviously Peter Pan?"
Maddie laughed. "The Lost Boys give it away."
Jamie studied his hands. "Mother keeps the windows open in all our bedrooms while we're gone, like Mrs. Darling, just in case we come flying home when she's not expecting us. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1593394

What makes you shiver so?"

He stared at me with hatred and derision. He sat with his knees drawn up close to his chest, his gloved hands in tight fists beneath his chin. "Come," I said, and held out an arm so that he might sit against my shoulder.

He muttered, "I don't want your cold."

"I offer you my warmth," I said.

Reluctantly, resentfully, he curled himself into the hollow between my arm and chest. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 996431

Maddie took the top of her egg off. The hot bright yolk was like summer sun breaking through cloud. The first daffodil in the snow. A gold sovereign wrapped in a white silk handkerchief. She dipped her spoon in it and licked it. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 674467

The quick, sudden terror of exploding bombs is not the same as the never-ending, bone-sapping fear of discovery and capture. It never goes away. There isn't ever any relief, never the possibility of an 'All Clear' siren. You always feel a little bit sick inside, knowing the worst might happen at any moment. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1839374

But I have told the truth. Isn't that ironic? They sent me because I am so good at telling lies. But I have told the truth. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 2036308

I mean, we are all in it together. None of us is innocent; none of us is alone."

"You were both. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 658849

The fuss made over the chickens at the checkpoints is not to be believed. Unlike me they had their own papers. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1765996

Oh Julie, wouldn't I know if you were dead? Wouldn't I feel it happening, like a jolt of electricity to my heart? — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 600016

Everything I know about passive resistance I learned from Micheline. She always appeared to be doing exactly as she was told, but everything she did took twice as long as it should have. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 336158

It's impossible to stall a Lizzie. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1522608

Kiss me, Hardy!' Weren't those Nelson's last words at the Battle of Trafalgar? Don't cry. We're still alive and we make a sensational team. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1652828

Hope is treacherous, but how can you live without it? — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1645144

Don't you think it makes them stronger when you give them someone to despise? — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 2156769

Don't know how I kept going. You just do. You have to, so you do. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1625225

It's like being in love, discovering your best friend. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 2208327

Spiderwebs joined together can catch a lion. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1573354

I loved that phrase: soul mate. We asked Grandma what it meant and she said, 'Two people who understand each other without talking about it. Two halves of a whole. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1536409

She has the filthiest tongue of any woman in France. Burn her mouth clean. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1531496

Equality comes in different forms, and it is a lot harder being a girl in Ethiopia than it was in Pennsylvania. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 2149845

Southampton's barrage balloons floated gleaming in the moonlight like the ghosts of elephants and hippos. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1515894

A poet and a doctor. Maybe I could.
This the first thought I have of it. Maybe I could. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1512513

And this, even more wonderful and mysterious, is also true: when I read it, when I read what Julie's written, she is instantly alive again, whole and undamaged. With her words in my mind while I'm reading, she is as real as I am. Gloriously daft, drop-dead charming, full of bookish nonsense and foul language, brave and generous. She's right here. Afraid and exhausted, alone, but fighting. Flying in silver moonlight in a plane that can't be landed, stuck in the climb - alive, alive, ALIVE. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1449623

Hope has no feathers
Hope takes flight
tethered with twine
like a tattered kite,
slave to the wind's
capricious drift
eager to soar
but needing lift

Hope waits stubbornly
watching the sky
for turmoil, feeding on
things that fly:
crows, ashes, newspapers,
dry leaves in flight
all suggest wind
that could lift a kite

Hope sails and plunges
firmly caught
at the end of her string -
fallen slack, pulling taught,
ragged and featherless.
Hope never flies
but doggedly watches
for windy skies. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 2212699

You can't just sit in a corner weeping or you'll die. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1433258

People are complicated. There is so much more to everybody than you realize. You see someone in school everyday, or at work, in the canteen, and you share a cigarette of a coffee with them, and you talk about the weather or last night's air raid. But you don't talk so much about what was the nastiest thing you ever said to your mother, or how you pretended to be David Balfour, the hero of Kidnapped, for the whole of the year when you were 13, or what you imagine yourself doing with the pilot who looks like Leslie Howard if you were alone in his bunk after a dance. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1411476

These trials aren't about revenge. They're about justice. Don't you want justice, Rose Justice? — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1374567

She was never so petty. She did not dabble with minnows at the surface when there were thirty-pound salmon swimming deeper down. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 80906

If you're scared, do something. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 2111336

the Cup That Cheers — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 2056004

But I've never despised myself so much as I did that day - she was so small and - so fierce, so beautiful, it was like breaking a hawk's wings, stopping up a clear spring with bricks - digging up roses to make space to park your tank. Pointless and ugly. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 2034924

Look at me!' I screeched. 'Look at me, Amadeus von Linden, you sadistic hypocrite, and watch this time! You're not questioning me now, this isn't your work, I'm not an enemy agent spewing wireless code! I'm just a minging Scots slag screaming insults at your daughter! So enjoy yourself and watch! Think of Isolde! Think of Isolde and watch! — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 2069296

It had never occurred to me that simply being with a fellow prisoner would make me feel like I was still in prison. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1992412

Must stop. This ink is amazing, it really doesn't smear, even when you cry on it — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1947105

Incredible. It is just incredible that you can notice something like that when your face is so cold you can't feel it anymore, and you know perfectly well you are surrounded by death, and the only way to stay alive is to endure the howling wind and hold your course. And still the sky is beautiful. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1932071

I felt like one who wants to trap and cage a little bird, and after years of waiting and luring and baiting finds that she must do no more than hold out her hand, and the finch lands on her finger and does not fly. You scarcely dare to move. It rests on your hand whole and free, foolishly trusting and infinitely courageous. It will never be more beautiful. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1882488

A part of me will always be unflyable, stuck in the climb. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1873710

I don't believe for a minute-that we wouldn't have become friends somehow-that an unexploded bomb wouldn't have gone off and blown us both into the same crater, or that God himself wouldn't have come along and knocked our heads together in a flash of green sunlight. But it wouldn't have been likely. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1660013

It's awful, telling it like this, isn't it? As though we didn't know the ending. As though it could have another ending. It's like watching Romeo drink poison. Every time you see it you get fooled into thinking his girlfriend might wake up and stop him. Every single time you see it you want to shout, 'You stupid ass, just wait a minute,' and she'll open her eyes! 'Oi, you, you twat, open your eyes, wake up! Don't die this time!' But they always do. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 2250591

Careless talk costs lives. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 2125966

Godless as I am, I pray she's got away with it. It's like ripples in a pond, isn't it? It doesn't stop in one place. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 2128136

It never occurred to him that now he was looking at his master, at the one person in all the world who held his fate right between her palms - me, in patched hand-me-downs and untrimmed hair and idiot smile - and that my hatred for him is pure and black and unforgiving. And that I don't believe in God, but if I did, if I did, it would be the God of Moses, angry and demanding and OUT FOR REVENGE ... — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1792303

He wept when they told him you were no longer allowed to see him. He WEPT. How much weeping have you done on his account, girl?"

"I wake up screaming every night on his account. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1759446

If you show this devious little liar one atom's worth of compassion I will have you shot. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 2130873

The anticipation of what they will do to you is every bit as sickening in a dream as when it is really going to happen. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 2051782

There were no route maps posted on the walls, but a Wonderland-style sign commanding, 'If you know where you are, then please tell others. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 2156661

It was a rather extraordinary conversation if you think about it
both of us speaking in code. But not military code, not Intelligence or Resistance code
just feminine code. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 364255

Black Dove, let's write. Let's work on a story. Let's work on Glassland."
"Make me a prisoner in the Fortress of Clarity."
"Got to rescue you. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 655833

More than anything else, I think, Maddie went to war on behalf of the Holy Island seals. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 649601

Nothing like an arcane literary debate with your tyrannical master while you pass the time leading to your execution. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 649482

Jamie let go of me. "Shut your mucky gob, man." He stepped close to our fearless leader in the dark, took hold of his jacket by the collar, and in a dead quiet voice that had gone dangerously Scots, threatened heatedly, "Talk like that again wi' these brave lassies listenin' an' Ah'll tear the filthy English tongue frae yer heid, so Ah will. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 621193

I, of course, took the opportunity to interpose with pigheaded Wallace pride, 'I am not English, you ignorant Jerry bastard, I am a SCOT. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 541918

We make a sensational team. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 526734

Unless you were doing them a favor by killing them. Then, you'd let them down if you didn't, if you couldn't make yourself. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 507255

I don't recognise any of my emotions any more. There's no such thing as plain joy or grief. It's horror and relief and panic and gratitude all jumbled together. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 486960

Emmy and I are still Habte Sadek's favorite foreigners, and it is all because I wanted to look at his feet when I was eleven years old! But it never hurts to be polite to people. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 463146

And you know, it was like I was breathing my own self back into me to say these word,s to remember that these things existed
the green trees of the eastern woodland at home in North America, their strong and supple branches, sunlight through the trees. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 460512

Von Loewe really should know me well enough by now to realize that I am not going to face my execution without a fight. Or with anything remotely resembling dignity. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 383393

I am in the Special Operations Executive because I can speak French and German and am good at making up stories, and I am a prisoner in the Ormaie Gestapo HQ because I have no sense of direction whatsoever. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 687762

There is only one reason I did not go down in flames over the Angers, and that is because I knew I had Julie in the back. Would never have had the presence of mind to put that fire out if I hadn't been trying to save her life. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 364041

KISS ME, HARDY! Kiss me, QUICK! — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 345421

Mary Queen of Scots had a little dog, a Skye terrier, that was devoted to her. Moments after Mary was beheaded, the people who were watching saw her skirts moving about and they thought her headless body was trying to get itself to its feet. But the movement turned out to be her dog, which she had carried to the block with her, hidden in her skirts. Mary Stuart is supposed to have faced her execution with grace and courage (she wore a scarlet chemise to suggest she was being martyred), but I don't think she could have been so brave if she had not secretly been holding tight to her Skye terrier, feeling his warm, silky fur against her trembling skin. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 303279

(I really would like to catapult myself back there in time and kick my own teeth in.) — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 278152

Please come back soon. The window is always open. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 273755

Queenie was devoted to careless name-dropping, scattering the details of her privileged upbringing without the faintest hint of modesty or embarrassment (though, after a while Maddie began to realize she only did it with people she liked or people she detested
those who didn't mind and those she didn't care about
anyone in between, or who might have been offended, she was more cautious with). — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 216389

Where I fail in accuracy, I hope I make up for it in plausibility. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 201393

He just put his hand through the bulkhead, exactly as she'd done, and squeezed my shoulder. He has very strong fingers.
And he kept his hand there the whole way home, even when he was reading the map and giving me headings.
So I am not flying alone now after all. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 92665

If I am very lucky - I mean if I am clever about it - I will get myself shot. Here, soon. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 89148

You know how sometimes when you come home and you haven't seen a place for so long that it seems unbelievably beautiful, and you want to cry because you love it so much you think it's going to break your heart? I felt like that, too. I am HOME. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 82311

I wish you could go through life without ever caring about anything, without ever getting attached to people and dreams and inaccessible places. It just makes you sad when you can never go back. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1135556

You just have to be careful with Momma for a while," Teo told me. "She's broken. Like a jug with a broken handle that you try to glue back together. It looks all right, and it'll still hold water. It's still a good jug. But you better not ever try to pick it up by the handle. You have to wait for the glue to dry, and even then it might not hold. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1366521

God knows what I thought! Your brain does amazing acrobatics when it doesn't want to believe something. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1327795

Bloody Machiavellian English Intelligence Officer playing God — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1311341

It's an illusion I've noticed before
words on a page are like oxygen to a petrol engine, firing up ghosts. It only lasts while the words are in your head. After you put down the paper or pen, the pistons fall lifeless again. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1296984

Maddie quickly pulled down the blackout curtains over her bright and vulnerable soul. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1275420

Don't you ever do that to me."
"You know you'll never make as much of a fool of yourself as Horatio Augustus. So I won't have to. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1252381

I am no longer afraid of getting old. Indeed I can't believe I ever said anything so stupid. So childish. So offensive and arrogant.
But mainly, so very, very stupid. I desperately want to grow old. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1234192

When you're flying, the changing balance of lift and weight pulls you up or down. But another pair of forces pulls you forward or backward through the air: thrust and drag. Thrust is the power that pulls the kite forward - you run with it to get it up in the air. You have to have thrust to create lift. Drag is there because your kite's surfaces push against the air and slow the kite down. Drag doesn't pull you out of the sky; it makes you fly more slowly. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1192801

Here he comes, moving among the enemies all on his own. Do you see? He acts alone, but he is not alone. He has an army behind him, also, my army; and with our lives we will fight to defend him. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1190675

In trust and wisdom you can be as far superior to anyone as you dare make yourself. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1171883

We are a sensational team — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1369858

The Rosalie really did not want to go like the clappers and performed its usual consumptive drama every time we came to an uphill slope, coughing and gasping like a dying Dickens heroine, and finally just stopped - engine still gasping a bit but the car just stopped. Simply could not move forward up the hill. Choke full out but cylinders firing pathetically as though we were trying to make the poor thing run on nothing but air. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1057120

But a part of me lies buried in lace and roses on a riverbank in France-a part of me is broken off forever. A part of me will be unflyable, stuck in the climb. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 1037536

She tried not to think about what it would be like running across the airfield to the radio room an hour from now, under fire. But she did it. Because you do. It is incredible what you do, knowing you have to. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 990498

She whispered, 'C'etait la Verite?' Was that Verity? Or perhaps she just meant, Was that the truth? Was it true? Did any of it really happen? Were the last three hours real? 'Yes,' I whispered back. 'Oui. C'etait la verite. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 986396

Teach your boy to fly, and he will be safe from spears and antique rifles." "I don't want him to go to war at all!" "When it comes, you will have no choice. The only way to save him is to lift him above the crowd. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 970328

But people need lift, too. People don't get moving, they don't soar, they don't achieve great heights, without someone buoying them up. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 959279

Doing the thing you are scared of is much harder than not being afraid of anything. It is easy to be brave. It is not so easy to be scared and do a brave thing anyway. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 927478

But she did it. Because you do. It is incredible what you do, knowing you have to. A — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 806328

High time they put the RAF in kilts. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 741113

But while they stayed down, rolling around and trying to kill each other, Em jumped to her feet.
Her costumes sometimes have little finishing touches that no one can see. She hadn't told me about this one. — Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein Quotes 698994

There's glory and honour in being chosen. But not much room for free will — Elizabeth Wein