The Mapping of Love and Death (Maisie Dobbs, #7)

by Jacqueline Winspear

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms. —GEORGE ELIOT, DANIEL DERONDA

theodolite.

Sappers,

you know what my chaps used to call the cartographers, don’t you?” He did not wait for Maisie to guess. “They called them the artillery’s astrologers.

a good mapmaker had to be something of an expert in divination, as well as the more formal aspects of his profession.

civvy street,

“The mapmaker is not only a mathematician, but an artist.

“Extremes live within us all. The joy of association resides alongside the anticipation of loss. What is given will be taken, what we have is often only of value to us when it is gone.”

A map is a conduit for wonder, a tool for adventure. But it is also an instrument of power—and like all things, power has two faces.

problems were best solved when one was moving, because if one is trying to find the key to a troubling case, moving the body will move the mind.

“When you are sitting in silence, you open the door to a deeper wisdom—the knowing of the ages. When you are walking, with the path to that wisdom already carved anew by your daily practice, you find that an idea, a thought, a notion, comes to you, and you have the solution to a problem that seemed insoluble.”

Albion,

in general, the accepted manner of answering the telephone was to announce the telephone number first.

MG 14/40,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MG_14/40

tarmacadam

cosh,

carrying a heavy burden will cause a person to stoop and stagger, even though their bearing might suggest otherwise.”

The wounds of the past could always be camouflaged. Erasing them to extinguish all trace was the greater challenge.

she almost wished there would be no more guests, for then there would be no chasm of emptiness for her to negotiate when they were gone.

I felt as if I was shedding a skin, a bit like a snake, and I told Maurice that very thing. He agreed with me and pointed out that when a snake sheds its skin, it’s in fact very vulnerable, not least due to the fact that it can’t see.

you should know that all maps are drawn in hindsight. And hindsight, if interpreted with care, is what brings us wisdom.

parliament of the black crows