How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph) or (Part.Paragraph)
Quote #7
He intended to survive, he had one good reason to survive, and he didn't care whether they tagged along or not. (2.12)
Again, Robbie is punished for (a) planning and (b) not being Paul Marshall. There's a trend here…
Quote #8
That he could be cleared had all the simplicity of love. Merely tasting the possibility reminded him how much had narrowed and died. His taste for life, no less, all the old ambitions and pleasures. The prospect was of a rebirth, a triumphant return. He could become again the man who had once crossed a Surrey park at dusk in his best suit, swaggering on the promise of life […] (2.181)
This is a doubly doomed plan. In the first place, legally, a court wouldn't care if Briony went back on her testimony. And, in the second place, Robbie gets killed before she can recant anyway. The only rebirth he gets is in imagination—first his own, and then Briony's novel.
Quote #9
They could never be counted, the dreamed-up children, mentally conceived on the walk into Dunkirk, and later made flesh. (2.244)
Robbie is with the British retreat, and he's thinking about how all the men around him are thinking of how they want to get home and have kids. This is one of the few plans not by Paul Marshall which comes true: Many of the people who think about kids end up actually getting back to England and having kids. Robbie doesn't—but somebody does. There's also a nice suggestion here that kids themselves are hopes and dreams and plans, like babies are little imagined stories that come true. And there are a lot of kids milling around in the last section of the novel, remember—all of Briony's nieces and nephews and cousins. So maybe the book isn't entirely a downer.