ATONEMENT QUOTES

foundation

‘At some moments chilling, at others desperately sad, the play told a tale of the heart whose message, conveyed in a rhyming prologue, was that love which did not build a foundation on good sense was doomed.’ (p.3) CH.1

infancy

‘She took her daughter in her arms, into her lap – ah, that hot smooth little body she remembered from its infancy, and still not quite gone from her.’ (p.4) CH.1

shrine

‘Whereas her big sister’s room was a stew of uncooked books, unfolded clothes, unmade bed, unemptied ashtrays, Briony’s was a shrine to her controlling demon.’ (p.5) CH.1

cruel

‘She did not have it in her to be cruel.’ (p.5) CH.1

only child

‘Her effective status as an only child, as well as the relative isolation of the Tallis house, kept her, at least during the long summer holidays, from girlish intrigues with friends.’ (p.5) CH.1

self-exposure

‘Self-exposure was the inevitable the moment she described a character’s weakness; the reader was bound to speculate that she was describing herself.’ (p.6) CH.1

final page

‘A love of order also shaped the principles of justice, with deaths and marriage sin engines of housekeeping, the former being set aside exclusively for the morally dubious, the latter a reward withheld until the final page.’ (p.7) CH.1

refugees

‘refugees from a bitter domestic civil war.’ (p.8) CH.1

manipulation

‘wasn’t there manipulation here, wasn’t Lola using the twins to express something on her behalf, something hostile or destructive?’ (p.13) CH.1

Arabella

‘because that was how Leon was to see her, because she was Arabella.’ (p.13) CH.1

two inches

‘half-scale reproduction of Bernini’s Triton in the Pizza Barberini in Rome… could blow through his conch a jet only two inches high.’ (p.18) CH.2

ugliness

‘Morning sunlight, or any light, could not conceal the ugliness of the Tallis home.’ (p.19) CH.2

tragedy

‘a tragedy of wasted chances.’ (p.19) CH.2

lingering

‘Lingering here, bored and comfortable. Was a form of self-punishment tinged with pleasure, or the expectation of it: if she went away something bad might happen.’ (p.22) CH.2

Armistice

‘his death just a week before the Armistice.’ (pg. 24) CH.2

urgent

‘This was  a command on which he tried to confer urgent masculine authority. The affect on Cecelia was to cause her to tighten her grip.’ (pg.29) CH.2

banished

‘Her movements were savage, and she would not meet his eye. He did not exist, he was banished, and this was also the punishment.’ (pg.30)  CH.2

troubled small boys

‘Jackson, had wet the bed, as troubled small boys far from home will.’ (pg.32) CH.3

guise

‘Lola had come to the nursery that morning in the guise of the adult she considered herself at heart to be.’ (pg.34) CH.3

manners

behind her older cousin’s perfect manners was a destructive intent.’ (pg.34) CH.3

a story

‘A story was direct and simple, allowing nothing to come between herself and her reader – no intermediares.’ (pg.37) CH.3

sequence

‘The sequence was illogical – the drowning scene, followed by a rescue, should have preceded the marriage proposal.’ (pg.39) CH.3

wrong

‘how easy it was to get everything wrong, completely wrong.’ (pg.39) CH.3

three

‘She could write the scene three times over, from three points of view.’ (pg.40) CH.3

wickedness

‘It wasn’t wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.’ (pg.40)  CH.3

ghostly

‘nothing left of the dumb show by the fountain beyond what survived in memory, in three separate and overlapping memories. The truth had become as ghostly as invention.’ (pg.41) CH.3

met a man

‘Cecelia wondered, as she sometimes did when she met a man for the first time, if this was the one she was going to marry, and whether it was this particular moment she would remember for the rest of her life – with gratitude, or profound and particular regret.’ (pg.47) CH.4

sixteen

‘She had noticed him hanging around the children lately. Perhaps he was interested in Lola. He was sixteen, and certainly no boy.’ (pg.48 - DANNY HARDMAN) CH.4

innocently

‘innocently cruel.’ (pg.48 - DANNY HARDMAN) CH.4

flower beds

‘He’s got a first-rate mind, so I don’t know what the hel he’s doing, messing about in flower beds.’ (pg.52) CH.4

thinner

‘Her arm was much thinner and lighter than his mother’s and Pierrot began to sob, but quietly, still mindful of being in a strange house where politeness was all.’ (pg.57) CH.5

sisters

‘dropped away into a light sleep in which his young sisters had appeared, all four of them, standing around his bedside, prattling and touching and pulling at his clothes. He woke, hot across his chest and throat, uncomfortably aroused.’ (pg.60 - PAUL MARSHALL) CH.5

Hamlet

‘Hamlet,’ They had in fact seen a matinee pantomime at the London palladium during which Lola had spilled a strawberry drink down her frock... ‘One of my favourites’ Paul said. It was fortunate for her that he too had neither read nor seen the play.’ (pg.60-61) CH.5

favourite sister

‘D’you know, you remind me of my favourite sister...’ (pg.61) CH.5

bite

‘Bite it,’ he said softly, ‘You’ve got to bite it.’ (pg.62) CH.5

first name

‘they had always called her by her first name.’ pg.66 CH.6

employer

‘there goes my mother’s employer’s daughter.’ (pg.79) CH.8

Malvolio

‘himself as Malvolio, cross-gartered. How apt.’ (pg.82) CH.8

patron

‘He had spent his childhood moving freely between the bungalow and the main house. Jack Tallis was his patron.’ (pg.86) CH.8

footpath

‘In the years to come he would often think back to this time, when he walked along the footpath that made a shortcut.’ (pg.90) CH.8

optimism

‘A fresh adventure ahead, not an exile at all, he was suddenly certain. It was right and good that he should study medicine. He could not have explained his optimism – he was happy and therefore bound to succeed.’ (pg.90) CH.8

freedom

‘One word contained everything he felt, and explained why he was to dwell on this moment later. Freedom.’ (pg.91) CH.8

door

‘suddenly, seized by horror and absolute certainty…she entered the house and the door was closed behind her.’ (pg.95) CH.8

widow

‘But the public gas of the stairway mirror as she hurried towards it revealed a woman on her way to a funeral… It was her future self, at eighty-five, in widows weeds.’ (pg.96) CH.9

Quincey twins

No one in the Tallis household was looking after the Quincey twins…how hopeless and terrifying it was for them to be without love, to construct an existence out of nothing in a strange house.’ (pg.100) CH.9

absent

‘her parents were absent in their different ways.’ (pg.103) CH.9

criminal

‘with the letter, something elemental, brutal, perhaps even criminal had been introduced.’ (pg.113) CH.10

disgusting

‘She could never forgive Robbie and his disgusting mind.’ (pg.115) CH.10

feelings?

‘She could do the woods in winter, and the grimness of a castle wall. But how to do feelings?’ (pg.116) CH.10

heard

‘worried that Lola’s crying would be heard downstairs, Briony got to her feet again and pushed the bedroom door closed.’ (pg.117) CH.10

torturing

‘The twins have been torturing me.’ – LOLA (pg.117) CH.10

germolene

‘the womanly tang of Lola’s perfume could not conceal a childish whiff of Germolene.’ (pg.117) CH.10

north

‘The family home in the north – Briony imagined streets of blackened mills, and grim men trudging to work with sandwiches in tin boxes.’ (pg.118) CH.10

maniac

‘A maniac… When she was little he used to carry her on his back and pretend to be a beast.’ (pg.119) CH.10

protector

‘But she has seen Robbie’s letter, she had cast herself as her sisters protector, and she had been instructed by her cousin: what she saw must have been shaped in part by what she already knew, or believed she knew.’ (pg.123) CH.10

huge and wild

‘He looked so huge and wild, and Cecelia with her bare shoulders and thin arms so frail.’ (pg.123) CH.10

attack

‘her immediate understanding was that she has interrupted an attack.’ (pg.123) CH.10

morals

‘hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people.’ – EMILY (pg.128) CH.11

silly imagining

‘She had come looking for her sister – no doubt with the exhilarated notion of protecting her... Propelled from the depths of her ignorance, silly imagining and girlish rectitude.’ (pg.139) CH.11

transitional

‘At this stage in her life Briony inhabited an ill-defined transitional space between the nursery and adult worlds which she crossed and recrossed unpredictably.’ (pg.141) CH.11

pull them off her

‘I saw it myself- had to break it up and pull them off her. I have to say, I was surprised, little fellows like that. They went for her all right.’ – PAUL (pg.141) CH.11

transformed

‘go out searching alone. This decision, as he was to acknowledge many times, transformed his life.’ (pg.144) CH.11

PC Vockins

‘to speak to PC Vockins, she would first have to talk to his wife.’ (pg.146) CH.12

so badly harmed

‘Robbie wanted to know why Marshall had not mentioned the matter before if Lola had been so badly harmed.’ (pg.142) CH.12

boys will be boys

By the time he had told her that boys would be boys and raised a search party of half a dozen local men from their beds, an hour would’ve passed and the twins would have come back on their own.’ (pg.146) CH.12

‘it was not the boys that were on her mind, but their mother, her sister, or rather her incarnation within the wiry frame of Lola… feeling of resentment… It was her sister Hermione that she was soothing, - Hermione, stealer of scenes, little mistress of histrionics.’ (pg.146) CH.12

guiltless

‘How like Hermione Lola was, to remain guiltless while others destroyed themselves at her prompting.’ (pg.147) CH.12

worked late

‘he worked late. But she knew he did not sleep at his club, and he knew that she knew this… wronged child, wronged wife.’ (pg.148) CH.12

arithmetical

a series of arithmetical calculations… Assume 100,000 tons of bombs dropped in two weeks. Result: five million casualties.’ (pg.149) CH.12

half hour

‘within the half hour Briony would commit her crime.’ (pg.156) CH.13

justice

‘do justice to her new knowledge. Or did she mean, her wiser grasp of her own ignorance?’ (pg.160) CH.13

rocking

‘Lola was sitting forward, with her arms crossed around her chest, hugging herself and rocking slightly.’ (pg.165) CH.13

frame it

‘Briony wanted her to say his name. To seal the crime, frame it with the victims curse, close his fate with the magic of naming.’ (pg.165) CH.13

victim

‘she was able to retreat behind an air of wounded confusion and as treasured patient, recovering victim, lost child, let herself be bathed in concern and guilt of the adults in her life. How could we have let this happen to a child?’ (pg.168) CH.13

remain silent

‘Lola was required only to remain silent about the truth, banish it and forget it entirely, and persuade herself not of some contrary tale, but simply of her own uncertainty.’ (pg.168) CH.13

rosary

‘fragmented recollection of that late night and summer dawn. How guilt refiner the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime.’ (pg.173) CH.14

gold case

‘he walked up and down the terrace with them, one on each side, and on the turn offered them cigarettes from a gold case.’ (pg.175) CH.14

casting suspicion

‘It was understandable, though poor form, that this young woman should be covering for her friend by casting suspicion on an innocent boy.’ (pg.181) CH.14

shoulders

‘this was Robbie, with one boy sitting up on his shoulders and the other holding his hand and trailing a little behind..The other boy let his head loll against Robbie’s waist and drew the man’s hand across his chest for protection or warmth.’ (pg.182) CH.14

cynical

‘Did he feel he could conceal his crime behind an apparent kindness?… This was surely a cynical  attempt to win forgiveness for what could never be forgiven.’ (pg.183) CH.14

damnation

‘It was further confirmation of his guilt, and the beginning of his punishment. It had the look of eternal damnation.’ (pg.184) CH.14

horrors

‘There were horrors enough, but it was the unexpected detail that threw him and afterwards would not let him go.’ (pg.191) CH.1T

leg

‘it was a perfect leg, pale, smooth, small enough to be a child’s. The way it was angled in the fork, it seemed to be on display, for their benefit or enlightenment:this is a leg.’ (pg.192) CH.1T

push it away

‘The scraps of cloth, he was beginning to think, may have been a child’s pyjamas. A boy’s… He was trying to push it away, but it would not let him go. A french boy asleep in his bed.’ (pg.194) CH.1T

mutilated

‘when they shut their eyes, they saw those mutilated bodies.’ (pg.199) CH.1T

All those dead.

‘All that fighting we did twenty-five years ago. All those dead. Now the Germans back in France.’ – HENRI BONNET (pg.201) CH.1T

ordinary

‘where a child’s limb in a tree was something that ordinary men could ignore.’ (pg.202) CH.2F

come back

‘And there was hope. I’ll wait for you. Come back.’ (pg.202-203) CH.2F

hysterical

‘They turned on you, all of them, even my father. When they wrecked your life they wrecked mine. They chose to believe the evidence of a silly, hysterical, little girl… Now that I’ve broken away, I’m beginning to understand the snobbery that lay behind their stupidity.’ (pg.209)CH.2F

penance

‘she’s taken in nursing as a sort of penance.’ (pg.212) CH.2F

cattle

‘one field of cattle had a dozen shell craters, and fragments of flesh, bone, and brindled skin had been blasted across a hundred-yard stretch.’ (pg.214) CH.3H

old man, women, children…

‘one old man in a fresh lawn suit, bow tie, and carpet slippers shuffled by with the help of two sticks… Wherever he was going he surely would not make it… ‘five bodies in a ditch, three women, two children.’ (pg.216/ 219) CH.3H

who would care?

‘Who would care? Who would ever describe this confusion, and come up with the village names and the dates for the history books? And take the reasonable view and begin to assign the blame.’ (pg.227) CH.4T

pure state

‘To be cleared would be a pure state.’ (pg.228) CH.4T

Find Cecelia

‘His business was simple. Find Cecelia and love her, marry her, and live without shame.’ (pg.228) CH.4T

absolution

‘Here, she was offering a possibility of absolution. But it was not for him, He had done nothing wrong. It was for herself, for her own crime which her conscience could no longer bear.’ (pg.228) CH.4T

prison

‘Yes, she was just a child. But not every child sends a man to prison with a lie.’ (pg.228) CH.4T

infantile

An extraordinary opportunity in the dark, during the search for the twins, to avenge herself… The impulse, the flash of massive, the infantile destructiveness’ (pg.233) CH.4T

mother and child

‘Where the woman and her son had been was a crater...Mother and child had been vaporised.’ (pg.238-239) CH.5T

rewrite

‘Briony would change her evidence, she would rewrite the past so that the guilty became the innocent. But what was guilt these days? It was cheap. Everyone was guilty, and no one was.’ (pg.261) CH.6I