The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Later, I came to see that Mr. Dickens and Mr. Wordswoth were thinking of men like me when they wrote their words. But most of all, I believe that William Shakespeare was. Mind you, I cannot always make sense of what he says, but it will come. It seems to me that the less he said, the more beauty he made. Do you know what sentence of his I admire the most? It is, 'The bright day is done, and we are for the dark'. I wish I'd known those words on the day I watched the German troops land, planeload after planeload of them - and come off ships down in the harbour! All I could think of was, Damn them, damn them, over and over again. If I could have thought the words, 'The bright day is done, and we are for the dark', I'd have been consoled somehow and ready to go out and contend with circumstance - instead of my heart sinking to my shoes.
Mary Ann Shaffe, Annie Barrows: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society