Atonement

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

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

"Writing was a way of understanding the world."

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

"Her mind was not her own."

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

"How can a love story ever end?"

"The problem these days is that we're all expected to be completely consistent."

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

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

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

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

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

"Writing was the only redemption available to her."

"The truth was too terrible to bear alone."

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

"The war would make her a better writer."

"There was nothing authentic in her existence anymore."

"The body was a machine of joy and pleasure, not sin."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"She understood that innocence, once lost, could never truly be restored."