How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph) or (Part.Paragraph)
Quote #7
So many decent people could not be wrong, and doubts like hers, she's been told, are to be expected. Briony did not wish to cancel the whole arrangement. She did not think she had the courage, after all her initial certainty and two or three days of patient, kindly interviewing, to withdraw her evidence. However, she would have preferred to qualify, or complicate, her use of the word "saw." Less like seeing, more like knowing. Then she could have left it to her interrogators to decide whether they would proceed together in the name of this kind of vision. (1.13.51)
Briony gets tangled up in what happened outside her head and what happened inside it. Which is sort of understandable, since she's thirteen and in a traumatic and scary situation. The problem is that the adults involved also get confused as to what is happening in their heads and what might have happened outside their heads. The version of reality that traps Robbie isn't just—or even mostly—Briony's. That's why Cecilia is so mad at her parents.
Quote #8
Yes, and by the way, she also said that she's had a piece of writing turned down by Cyril Connelly at Horizon. So at least someone can see through her wretched fantasies. (2.100)
This is Cecilia writing to Robbie. She's arguing that Briony's writing is stupid and fantastic and unreal because it comes from the same place as her accusation of Robbie. Would Cecilia have liked Atonement if she'd read it? From this quote, it seems like probably not.
Quote #9
For three years she must have nurtured a feeling for him, kept it hidden, nourished it with fantasy or embellished it in her stories. She was the sort of girl who lived in her thoughts. The drama by the river might have been enough to sustain her all that time. (2.216)
Here Robbie remembers a crush Briony had on him, and wonders if that's the reason that she accused him. Briony herself suggests it was not (3.412). If Briony's telling the truth (emphasis on if), then Robbie's falsely accusing her as she falsely accused him. Except… Briony is writing this, remember. How does she know what Robbie thought of her? She may just be making it up—which means she's falsely accusing him of falsely accusing her…