Briony Tallis

"The capacity to imagine the suffering of others was the beginning of moral development."

"She had learned that the writer's task was not to judge but to understand."

"In her mind, she could recreate the scene, alter it, perfect it."

"The act of writing was both confession and concealment."

"The past could only be redeemed through the perfection of its retelling."

"The truth, she had come to believe, was less important than understanding."

"In attempting to atone, one risked becoming enslaved by the very act of atonement."

"She had learned that the deepest honesty sometimes required the greatest fictions."

"Telling a lie and living a lie are two very different things."

"It was not his fault, or so she reasoned."

"There was nothing authentic in her existence anymore."

"The war would make her a better writer."

"Words could heal, if only they were the right words."

"The truth was too terrible to bear alone."

"Writing was the only redemption available to her."

"She had to live with the knowledge of her own cruelty."

"The act of writing could not undo what had been done."

"She had destroyed the one thing that mattered most."

"The written confession could never equal the spoken one."

"She had learned that imagination could be both gift and curse."

"How can a love story ever end?"

"What did it matter if one was only imagining?"

"Her mind was not her own."

"It was not her fault that people did not understand."

"Writing was a way of understanding the world."

"She had to live with what she had done."

"The world was not as she had imagined it."