"I like to think that it isn't weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair, to let my lovers live and to unite them at the end, I gave them happiness, but i was not so self-serving as to let the forgive me. Not quite, not yet."

This shows how Briony has used her writing and literature to distract herself from the fact that she ruined Cecelia and Robbies love for one another, almost as a way to cope with the wrong that she has done. She knows what she is done is done and there is no going back to fix it but she can pay a small amount of respect by letting them live and love in her literature. This is the closest thing she will ever get to atonement.