Jacqueline Winspear Quotes

Coincidence is a messenger sent by truth.

Shame, isn’t it? That we only like our heroes out in the street when they are looking their best and their uniforms are ‘spit and polished,’ and not when they’re showing us the wounds they suffered on our behalf.

One always has riches when one has a book to read.

Stay with the question. The more it troubles you, the more it has to teach you.

Memories are links in a golden chain that bind us until we meet again.

Never judge a journey by the distance.

Yes, it does make the load rather heavy if you carry tools for every eventuality.

Truth walks toward us on the paths of our questions. As soon as you think you have the answer, you have closed the path and may miss the vital new information. Wait awhile in the stillness, and do not rush to conclusions, no matter how uncomfortable the unknowing.

It was time to move on, to dance with life again.

a question has the most power before we rush to answer it, when it is still making us think, still testing us.

I often think it would be really interesting to take all of those who would wage war to the battlefield cemeteries, and say, explain yourself to the dead. Explain yourself to the dead!

only when we have a respect for time will we have learned something of the art of living.

I'll tell you this. Leaving that which you love breaks your heart open. But you will find a jewel inside, and this precious jewel is the opening of your heart to all that is new and all that is different, and it will be the making of you-if you allow it to be.

If you look at the First World War, the Kaiser was actually, actively buying a lot of the armaments from Britain! in the years, in the run-up to the First World War. And I mean, there was a connection there. He was, indeed, Queen Victoria's grandson. You know, they were all related, all these royal families.

It is indeed a wondrous universal alchemy, is it not? When one's heartfelt intentions cause mountains to move.

What's interesting to me, is a moving someone through time; in a way, history is part of my landscape. And it fascinates me that history can be so easily reflected in what happens today.

It's really important in any historical fiction, I think, to anchor the story in its time. And you do that by weaving in those details, by, believe it or not, by the plumbing.

Most people don't realize that they feel something is wrong before they think something is wrong.

She had always told herself that she did hti job because she wanted to help others; afterall, hadn't Maurice told her once that the most important question any individual could ask was, "How might I serve?" If her response to that question had been pure, surely she would have coninued with the calling to be a nurse.... But that role hadn't been quite enough for her. She would have missed the excitement, the thrill when she embarked on the work of collecting clues to support a case.

if the way ahead is not clear, time is often the best editor of one's intentions.

in this great war [WWI] ... they had, all of them, on all sides, lost their freedom. The freedom to think hopefully of the future.

What does anyone really know about the impetus to go to war? And so much is uncovered in hindsight. And there are aspects of even past wars that are only coming out now. Historians discover letters here, notes there, and look very carefully at different aspects of not only any conflict but any great historical event.

Im a storyteller; that is what I do. And Im particularly interested in history; and in history of a certain era. But what is interesting for me is how many, how many things you see repeated.

Because, we assume, these days, you just get in a car, you turn the key, and woosh, you're up the road. Or even now, dare I say, you don't turn a key; you get in a car and you're up the road. And yet with this particular car, it was a five-step process to start it. So how do I let the reader know that?

It was Harry Patch, who was the last living World War I veteran; and by veteran I mean someone who actually fought in the war, he didn't just happen to be in the army at that time, in the Great War. And when the Iraq War started, he was interviewed, and they said, well what do you think of this? And he said, in a very sad voice, "Well, that's why my mates died. We thought we were going to end all that sort of thing."