Ian McEwan Quotes

“Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?”

Source: Atonement

“It is shaming sometimes, how the body will not, or cannot, lie about emotions.”

Source: Atonement

“It is quite impossible these days to assume anything about people's educational level from the way they talk or dress or from their taste in music. Safest to treat everyone you meet as a distinguished intellectual.”

Source: On Chesil Beach

“In my dreams I kiss your cunt, your sweet wet cunt. In my thoughts I make love to you all day long.”

Source: Atonement

“You can tell a lot from a person's nails. When a life starts to unravel, they're among the first to go.”

Source: Atonement

“In that shrinking moment he discovered that he had never hated anyone until now. It was a feeling as pure as love, but dispassionate and icily rational.”

Source: Saturday

Ian McEwan Quotes about love

“That love which does not build a foundation on good sense is doomed.”

Source: Atonement

“How easily this unthinking family love was forgotten.”

Source: Atonement

“Let his name be cleared and everyone else adjust their thinking. He had put in time, now they must do the work. His business was simple. Find Cecilia and love her, marry her and live without shame.”

Source: Atonement

“All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them.”

Source: Atonement

“When it's gone, you'll know what a gift love was. You'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.”

Source: On Chesil Beach

Ian McEwan book Enduring Love

Source: Enduring Love

Ian McEwan Quotes about life

“It was common enough, to see so much death and want a child. Common, therefore human, and he wanted it all the more. When the wounded were screaming, you dreamed of sharing a little house somewhere, of an ordinary life, a family line, connection.”

“There's a taste in the air, sweet and vaguely antiseptic, that reminds him of his teenage years in these streets, and of a general state of longing, a hunger for life to begin that from this distance seems like happiness.”

Source: Atonement

“This is how the entire course of a life can be changed - by doing nothing.”

Source: Saturday

“If life was a dream, then dying must be the moment when you woke up. It was so simple it must be true. You died, the dream was over, you woke up. That's what people meant when they talked about going to heaven. It was like waking up.”

Page 166.
Source: On Chesil Beach (2007)

Ian McEwan book The Daydreamer

Source: The Daydreamer

“He knew these last lines by heart and mouthed them now in the darkness. My reason for life. Not living, but life. That was the touch. And she was his reason for life, and why he must survive.”

“I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life. Cee”

Source: Atonement

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.”

Source: Atonement

Ian McEwan: Trending quotes

“It was always the view of my parents… that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people.”

Source: Atonement

“When there are no consequences, being wrong is simply a diversion.”

“It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.”

Source: Saturday

Ian McEwan Quotes

“The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.”

Source: Atonement

“… falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance.”

Source: Atonement

“A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.”

Source: Atonement

“Find you, love you, marry you, and live without shame.”

Source: Atonement

“She lay in the dark and knew everything.”

Source: Atonement

“It was not generally realized that what children mostly wanted was to be left alone.”

Source: Atonement

“No one knows anything, really. It's all rented, or borrowed.”

Source: Atonement

“come back, come back to me”

“How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime.”

Source: Atonement

“But whathappened? The answer is simple: the lovers survive and flourish.”

Source: Atonement

“Dearest Cecilia, You’d be forgiven for thinking me mad, the way I acted this afternoon. The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence, Cee, and I don’t think I can blame the heat.”

Source: Atonement

“Not everything people did could be in a correct, logical order, especially when they were alone.”

Source: Atonement

“At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.”

Source: Atonement

“From this new and intimate perspective, she learned a simple, obvious thing she had always known, and everyone knew; that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended.”

Source: Atonement

“These were everyday sounds magnified by darkness. And darkness was nothing - it was not a substance, it was not a presence, it was no more than an absence of light.”

Source: Atonement

“Nothing that can be, can come between me and the full prospect of my hopes.”

Source: Atonement

“The world should take note: not everything is getting worse.”

Source: Atonement

“Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and the beginning of morality”

Source: Saturday

“Finally, you had to measure yourself by other people - there really was nothing else. every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone taught you something about yourself.”

“I turned the pages so fast. And I suppose I was, in my mindless way, looking for a something, version of myself, a heroine I could slip inside as one might a pair of favourite shoes.”

Ian McEwan book Sweet Tooth

Source: Sweet Tooth

“Who you get, and how it works out - there's so much luck involved, as well as the million branching consequences of your unconscious choice of mate, that no one and no amount of talking can untangle it if it turns out unhappily.”

Ian McEwan book Enduring Love

Page 82.
Source: Enduring Love (1997)

“When anything can happen, everything matters.”

“… beauty, she had discovered occupied a narrow band. Ugliness, on the hand, had infinite variation.”

Source: Saturday

“He had never before felt so self-consciously young, nor experienced such appetite, such impatience for the story to begin.”

Source: Atonement

“Nothing was to be lost by beginning at the beginning…”

Source: Atonement

“But it was too interesting, too new, too flattering, too deeply comforting to resist, it was a liberation to be in love and say so, and she could only let herself go deeper.”

Source: Atonement

“It is shaming sometimes how the body will not, or cannot, lie about emotions. Who, for decorum’s sake, has ever slowed his heart, or muted a blush?”

Source: On Chesil Beach

“Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destory?”

“one could drown in irrelevance.”

Source: Atonement

“How can a novelist achieve atonement when with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also god?”

Source: Atonement

“A story lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken”

Source: Atonement

“It wasn't torpor that kept her - she was often restless to the point of irritability. She simply liked to feel that she was prevented from leaving, that she was needed.”

Source: On Chesil Beach

“Love doesn't grow at a steady rate, but advances in surges, bolts, wild leaps, and this was one of those.”

Source: Atonement

Ian McEwan book Sweet Tooth

Source: Sweet Tooth

“When they kissed she immediately felt his tongue, tensed and strong, pushing past her teeth, like some bully shouldering his way into a room. Entering her.”

“She returned his gaze, struck by the sense of her own transformation, and overwhelmed by the beauty which a lifetime havit had taught her to ignore.”

Source: On Chesil Beach

“She would simply wait on the bridge, calm and obstinate, until events, real events, not her own fantasies, roe to her challenge, and dispelled her insignificance.”

Source: Atonement

“The luxury of being half-asleep, exploring the fringes of psychosis in safety.”

Source: Atonement

“We go on our hands and knees and crawl our way towards the truth”

Source: Saturday

“Above all, she wanted to look as though she had not given the matter a moment's thought, and that would take time.”

Source: Atonement

“However, withered, I still feel myself to be exactly the same person I've always been. Hard to explain that to the young. we may look truly reptilian, but we're not a separate tribe.”

Source: Atonement

“I'm holding back, delaying the information. I'm lingering in the prior moment because it was a time when other outcomes were still possible.”

Source: Atonement

Ian McEwan book Enduring Love

Source: Enduring Love

“Let the guilty bury the innocent, and let no one change the evidence”

“I was the basest of readers. All I wanted was my own world, and myself in it, given back to me in artful shapes and accessible form.”

Source: Atonement

Ian McEwan book Sweet Tooth

Source: Sweet Tooth

“He would work through the night and sleep until lunch. There wasn't really much else to do. Make something, and die.”

Ian McEwan book Amsterdam

Source: Amsterdam

“He saw that no one owned anything really. It's all rented, or borrowed. Our possessions will outlast us, we'll desert them in the end.”

“When a court determines any question with respect to … the upbringing of a child … the child's welfare shall be the court's paramount consideration. ~ Section 1(1) Children Act 1989”

Source: Saturday

Ian McEwan book The Children Act

Quoted at the front of the book.
The Children Act (2014)

“Ian McEwan: I guess my starting point would be: the brain is responsible for consciousness, and we can be reasonably sure that when that brain ceases to be, when it falls apart and decomposes, that will be the end of us. From that quite a lot of things follow, especially morally. We are the very privileged owners of a brief spark of consciousness, and we therefore have which one can work towards and maybe make sacrifices, and, crucially, make sacrifices of other people. We have a marvellous gift, and you see it develop in children, this ability to become aware that other people have minds just like your own and feelings that are just as important as your own, and this gift of empathy seems to me to be the building block of our moral system.Richard Dawkins: I profoundly agree with you, and I've always felt that one of the things that is wrong with religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with answers which are not really answers at all.Ian McEwan: And if you have a sacred text that tells you how the world began or what the relationship is between this sky-god and you, it does curtail your curiosity, it cuts off a source of wonder. The loveliness of the world in its wondrousness is not apparent to me in Islam or Christianity and all the other major religions.”