Nothing in her life was sufficiently interesting or shameful to merit hiding;

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

It wasn’t only 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. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show how they had an equal value. That was the only moral a story need have.

A taste for the miniature was one aspect of an orderly spirit. Another was a passion for secrets:

No one was holding Cecilia back, no one would care particularly if she left. It wasn’t torpor that kept her—she was often restless to the point of irritability. She simply liked to feel that she was prevented from leaving, that she was needed.

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

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.

Tragedy had rescued the temple from being entirely a fake.

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.