While you are there amongst the trenches in France, tending to the wounded, being shelled by the enemy, here I am, safe and secure in my English country village.
-- Emily (chapter 1)

Importance: This quotation is from a letter from Emily to Clarissa that the novel opens with. It is an example of the correspondence between these two friends that carries on throughout the novel. This passage is significant because it demonstrates the contrast between the experience of Emily at home and Clarissa at the war front. These letters are also significant because they interrupt the novel's otherwise consistent third-person narrative voice and instead is from a first-person perspective.

Her gaze swept the full length of the garden to the rhododendrons and azalea bushes, now in full springtime bloom, surrounding the bottom of the lawn with brilliant pinks and oranges. The apple trees in the kitchen were also white with blossoms.
-- Narrator (chapter 1)

Importance: This passage is...