I love the story of a thing. I love a thing for what it means a thousand times more than for what it's worth.

— Elizabeth Wein

Incredible. It is just incredible that you can notice something like that when your face is so cold you can't feel it anymore, and you know perfectly well you are surrounded by death, and the only way to stay alive is to endure the howling wind and hold your course. And still the sky is beautiful.

— Elizabeth Wein

I need complicated railroad journeys and people speaking to me in foreign languages to keep me happy. I want to see the world and write stories about everything I see.

— Elizabeth Wein

Inspector Milne's suspicious prying appeared to have awakened her inner Bolshevik, and so I discovered my own lady mother is not above quietly circumventing the law.

— Elizabeth Wein

I realized I would be forced to run away from home if someone tried to arrange a marriage for me. I didn't want to think about it.

— Elizabeth Wein

It had never occurred to me that simply being with a fellow prisoner would make me feel like I was still in prison.

— Elizabeth Wein

It is possible there are some things you want so badly that you will change your life to make them happen.

— Elizabeth Wein

It's not unreal to me yet, though it might get that way soon. It still feels very real. And not even horrible -- the dead are just the dead. I am convinced that the living people they once where would have been proud of their protective bodies hoodwinking their murderers to save someone else. [.] But it's not civilized. There is something indecent about it -- really foully indecent. The civilized Rose-person in me, who still seems to exist beneath the layers of filth, knows this. [.] I have become so indifferent about the dead.

— Elizabeth Wein

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

Look at me!’ I screeched. ‘Look at me, Amadeus von Linden, you sadistic hypocrite, and watch this time! You’re not questioning me now, this isn’t your work, I’m not an enemy agent spewing wireless code! I’m just a mining Scots slag screaming insults at your daughter! So enjoy yourself and watch! Think of Isolde! Think of Isolde and watch!

— Elizabeth Wein