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81 " but putting these things on paper meant you had to unpack your own disgrace in ugly black and white. "
― Kate Quinn , The Alice Network
82 " People are stupid. Stick a halfway d-decent story and a random bit of paper under their nose, and with plenty of self-possession one can always get through. "
83 " A bad man can be a good carpenter or a good hatmaker or a good lover. The skill has nothing to do with the soul. "
84 " fiddly skills to be learned with infinite patience: the picking of locks, the writing of codes, and the learning of ciphers. The various types of invisible ink, how it could be made and how it could be read. How to read and draw maps, how to conceal messages—the list went on and on. "
85 " There is no time for fear, she told herself. It is an indulgence. "
86 " I can’t slouch in this getup.” I was crammed into a waist cincher like a band of iron, not that I needed one because I was built like a twig, but my froth of skirts wouldn’t hang right without it, so band of iron it was. That "
87 " We were like actors who had missed the cue that their scene was over. Life ought to be more like a play; the entrances and exits would be a lot cleaner. "
88 " The Londoners I’d encountered seemed to carry themselves with a certain grim humor, as if to say, You still can’t get cream with your scones, but we never did get invaded, eh? "
89 " François, "
90 " What would you do if you could do anything "
91 " Excellent, now it can all go back to the way it was.” As if roofs and buildings and shattered windows just leaped back into wholeness the day after peace was declared. "
92 " Your childhood sounds like a Degas picnic "
93 " Oradour-sur-Glane. "
94 " Never listen to people like that, little daisy. They’re not only joyless drones, they usually wear chintz and think housework is a virtue. "
95 " I had nothing left to bring up, but my stomach turned itself inside out anyway. "
96 " He smiled bitterly. “Bullets, boredom, or brandy—that’s how people like us go, because God knows we aren’t made for peace. "
97 " More Baudelaire,” he answered. “‘Nothing can match the abyss of your bed, potent oblivion lingers on your lips, and Lethe flows in your kisses. "
98 " the pistol again. “I can’t promise I won’t fail, "
99 " Why did it matter if something scared you, when it simply had to be done anyway? "
100 " I’d often wished I could work out people as easily as I did arithmetic: simply break them down to their common denominators and solve. Numbers didn’t lie; there was always an answer, and the answer was either right or it was wrong. Simple. But nothing in life was simple, and there was no answer here to solve for. "