Ian McEwan: Trending quotes (page 3)

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

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

“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.”

“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?”

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

“one could drown in irrelevance.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”