Atonement

From this new and intimate perspective, she learned a simple, obvious thing she had always known, and everyone knew: that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended.

How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime.

Briony was her last, and nothing between now and the grave would be as elementally important or pleasurable as the care of a child.

Even being lied to constantly, though hardly like love, was sustained attention; he must care about her to fabricate so elaborately and over such a long stretch of time. His deceit was a form of tribute to the importance of their marriage.

But his presence imposed order and allowed freedom. Burdens were lifted.

finally, you had to measure yourself by other people—there really was nothing else. Every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone taught you something about yourself.

There was desperation in all she said, an emptiness at its core, or something excluded or unnamed that made her talk faster, and exaggerate with less conviction.

Tragedy had rescued the temple from being entirely a fake.

Addressing Briony’s problems with kind words and caresses would have restored a sense of control.