"If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are."
Kristin Hannah addresses both love and war, two of the novel's central themes, in this first line. As The Nightingale takes place over the course of WWII, Hannah alludes to the fact that each character, including Vianne, will learn about their true nature through the progression of the novel and the war, but also that they will be motivated by the things and the people they love, who make them want to become better people. As Vianne is the one who speaks, and speaks from twenty years after the end of the war, this quote also shows her reflecting back on the war years, and remembering how she proved herself to be braver and stronger than she ever thought possible.
"Wounds heal. Love lasts. We remain."
Coming at the end of the novel, this quote references the horrors that each character experienced during the war: imprisonment, torture, the deaths of loved ones. In spite of this, many of the central characters (with the exception of Isabelle) survive the war and go on to live happy lives with their spouses and children. Though they may suffer, eventually time goes on and wounds, even the worst ones, heal over, contributing to The Nightingale's overarching theme of recovery and rebirth.
"Men tell stories. Women get on with it. For us it was a shadow war. There were no parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in history books. We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over."
While wars are typically men's stories, The Nightingale revolves around two women who participate in the war from the sidelines. There are countless references to soldiers throughout the novel, from Vianne's husband in a POW camp to the Nazis stationed across France, but the central story revolves around Isabelle, a spy, and Vianne, a housewife who aids in the hiding of Jewish children. Their work is silent, behind-the-scenes work, unlike the easily recognizable work that soldiers do, and while soldiers are honored for their bravery, if either Isabelle or Vianne were caught, the results would have been disastrous. While this quote references their lives, it's also an accurate representation of what happened in many Nazi-occupied countries during WWII. While men were fighting or in POW camps, women led the bulk of resistance and underground work, hiding in the shadows, trying not to be caught, and not being recognized for their work after the end of the war.
"But when he looked at her—and she looked at him—they both knew that there was something worse than kissing the wrong person. It was wanting to."
While Captain Beck is stationed in Vianne's home, the two start to develop romantic tension that neither of them particularly wants: they're both married, he's a Nazi, and there's a war going on. The difficulty in their relationship stems not from the fact that they're romantically involved - which they aren't - but that they want to be. Their relationship is representative of the enormous changes that can take place during war, when morality becomes grey, circumstances change the choices that people are willing to make, and fear and grief cause emotions to shift in ways that they otherwise wouldn't. The two might not act on their feelings, but the presence of those feelings show that something has fundamentally changed in wartime, and not for the better.
