Code Name Verity (Code Name Verity, #1)

by Elizabeth Wein

But she did it. Because you do. It is incredible what you do, knowing you have to.

If you’re scared, do something.

It’s like being in love, discovering your best friend.

I told him in my best Landed Gentry voice of frosty disdain how puny an empire the Third Reich must be if it can’t afford to supply paper to double-crossing informants like myself,

Von Linden really should know me well enough by now to realize that I am not going to face my execution without a fight. Or with anything remotely resembling dignity.

I am no longer afraid of getting old. Indeed I can’t believe I ever said anything so stupid. So childish. So offensive and arrogant. But mainly, so very, very stupid. I desperately want to grow old.

There’s glory and honor in being chosen. But not much room for free will.

“Patriotism is not enough—I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone.”

It is coming down. We are still a sensational team.

“We’ve turned this place into a real shit-hole,” she said. “There were roses in that square when I was first sent here. Now it’s nothing but mud and trucks. I think of her every single time I cross those cobbles, three times a day.

it never occurred to him that now he was looking at his master, at the one person in all the world who held his fate right between her palms—me, in patched hand-me-downs and untrimmed hair and idiot smile—and that my hatred for him is pure and black and unforgiving. And that I don’t believe in God, but if I did, if I did, it would be the God of Moses, angry and demanding and OUT FOR REVENGE,

So I am not flying alone now after all.

But a part of me lies buried in lace and roses on a riverbank in France—a part of me is broken off forever. A part of me will always be unflyable, stuck in the climb.