Code Name Verity Quotes

“Mary Queen of Scots had a little dog, a Skye terrier, that was devoted to her. Moments after Mary was beheaded, the people who were watching saw her skirts moving about and they thought her headless body was trying to get itself to its feet. But the movement turned out to be her dog, which she had carried to the block with her, hidden in her skirts. Mary Stuart is supposed to have faced her execution with grace and courage (she wore a scarlet chemise to suggest she was being martyred), but I don’t think she could have been so brave if she had not secretly been holding tight to her Skye terrier, feeling his warm, silky fur against her trembling skin.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“The anticipation of what they will do to you is every bit as sickening in a dream as when it is really going to happen.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“But I've never despised myself so much as I did that day - she was so small and - so fierce, so beautiful, it was like breaking a hawk's wings, stopping up a clear spring with bricks - digging up roses to make space to park your tank. Pointless and ugly.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“There is only one reason I did not go down in flames over the Angers, and that is because I knew I had Julie in the back. Would never have had the presence of mind to put that fire out if I hadn't been trying to save her life.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“She whispered, 'C'etait la Verite?' Was that Verity? Or perhaps she just meant, Was that the truth? Was it true? Did any of it really happen? Were the last three hours real? 'Yes,' I whispered back. 'Oui. C'etait la verite.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“If I am very lucky - I mean if I am clever about it - I will get myself shot. Here, soon.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“There were no route maps posted on the walls, but a Wonderland-style sign commanding, 'If you know where you are, then please tell others.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“If you're scared, do something.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“Must stop. This ink is amazing, it really doesn't smear, even when you cry on it”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“We make a sensational team.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“Von Linden really should know me well enough by now to realise that I am not going to face my execution without a fight. Or with anything remotely resembling dignity.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“I AM A COWARD.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“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...”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“I don't recognise any of my emotions any more. There's no such thing as plain joy or grief. It's horror and relief and panic and gratitude all jumbled together.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“How does she do it? She makes it sound like she is so cut up to be giving them this information, and it's all just bumph out of her head. She never told them ANYTHING. I don't think she's given them the right name of any airfield in Britain except Mainsend and Buscot, which of course were where she was stationed. They could have easily checked. It's all so close to truth, and so glib--her aircraft identification is rather good considering what a fuss she makes about it. It makes me think of the first day I met her, giving those directions in German. So cool and crisp, such authority--suddenly she really was a radio operator, a German radio operator, she was so good at faking it. Or when I told her to be Jamie, how she just suddenly turned into Jamie.

This confession of hers is rotten with error...”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“Bloody Machiavellian English Intelligence Officer playing God”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“People are complicated. There is so much more to everybody than you realise.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“The quick, sudden terror of exploding bombs is not the same as the never-ending, bone-sapping fear of discovery and capture. It never goes away. There isn’t ever any relief, never the possibility of an ‘All Clear’ siren. You always feel a little bit sick inside, knowing the worst might happen at any moment.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“Jamie let go of me. "Shut your mucky gob, man." He stepped close to our fearless leader in the dark, took hold of his jacket by the collar, and in a dead quiet voice that had gone dangerously Scots, threatened heatedly, "Talk like that again wi' these brave lassies listenin' an' Ah'll tear the filthy English tongue frae yer heid, so Ah will.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“If you show this devious little liar one atom's worth of compassion I will have you shot.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“I am in the Special Operations Executive because I can speak French and German and am good at making up stories, and I am a prisoner in the Ormaie Gestapo HQ because I have no sense of direction whatsoever.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“It was wonderful flirting with him, all the razor-edged literary banter, like Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. A battle of wit, and a test, too.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“High time they put the RAF in kilts.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“Queenie was devoted to careless name-dropping, scattering the details of her privileged upbringing without the faintest hint of modesty or embarrassment (though, after a while Maddie began to realize she only did it with people she liked or people she detested--those who didn't mind and those she didn't care about--anyone in between, or who might have been offended, she was more cautious with).”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“Southampton's barrage balloons floated gleaming in the moonlight like the ghosts of elephants and hippos.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“Maddie took the top of her egg off. The hot bright yolk was like summer sun breaking through cloud. The first daffodil in the snow. A gold sovereign wrapped in a white silk handkerchief. She dipped her spoon in it and licked it.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“I had been in France less than 48 hours before that obliging agent of yours had to stop me being run over by a French van full of French chickens because I’d looked the wrong way before crossing the street. Which shows how cunning the Gestapo are. “This person I’ve pulled from beneath the wheels of certain death was expecting traffic to travel on the left side of the road. Therefore she must be British, and is likely to have parachuted into Nazi-occupied France out of an Allied plane. I shall now arrest her as a spy.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“The fuss made over the chickens at the checkpoints is not to be believed. Unlike me they had their own papers.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“Maddie quickly pulled down the blackout curtains over her bright and vulnerable soul.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“But more often than not the missing face has been sucked into the engines of the Nazi death machine, like an unlucky lapwing hitting the propeller of a Lancaster bomber-nothing left but feathers blowing away in the aircraft's wake, as if those warm wings and beating heart had never existed.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity