ATONEMENT BOOK QUOTES

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.”

“An unexamined life is not worth living.”

“I think we all have an internal clock that tells us when we’re meant to do something.”

“Sometimes the smallest of decisions can change your life forever.”

“I suppose it’s not strange that the two things I remember most clearly about Cecil are his blue eyes and the way his ears stuck out from his head.”

“Typing, typing away, my one particular skill.”

“But that was not the nature of things. Bonds could never be made to endure forever.”

“And so that’s all the soldiers of war are – children of the same family.”

“Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“We had been nothing to each other for so long.”

“Wars came early to me; books came late.”

“It’s easier for armies to kill each other than it is for them to kill a mortal and immortal thing together.”

“How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God?”

“We all see what we want to see. You have to look with better eyes than that.” QUOTES ABOUT BOOK CHARACTERS

“You see, I wasn’t really vile to Robbie. Just detestable.”

“One who believes, as I do, that our souls are immortal can’t help but put our dead somewhere inside us.”

“Moral indignation is a technique used to endow the idiot with dignity.”

“The scenes that followed were of no importance; I have forgotten them.”

“I gave them happiness, but I was never a part of it.”

“The last time I saw her was outside Rosedale Terrace.”

“It is a sin to hold a child responsible for the sins of his parents.”

“How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered when the self-flagellating spirit moved, better than penance.”

“It is possible to be undone by one accepting glance.”

“I’m going to sleep the sleep of the righteous”

“I’m absolutely thrilled that I managed to come to terms with the reality of the situation before it was too late.”

“I never saw her again.”