Ian McEwan citations

“Ce moment avait été imaginé et désiré depuis trop longtemps pour être à leur mesure.”

Atonement

“A quel point la culpabilité raffinait-elle les façons de se torturer, enfilant les perles du détail en boucle sans fin, un chapelet à égrener pour la vie!”

Atonement

“Au-delà d'un certain âge, traverser la ville donne désagréablement à penser. Les adresses des morts s'accumulent.”

Atonement

“Elle murmura son nom avec la circonspection d'un enfant qui s'essaie à des sons distincts. Lorsqu'il énonça le sien en réponse, on aurait dit un mot nouveau - les syllabes restaient les mêmes, le sens était différent. Enfin, il prononça ces trois mots simples que nul art médiocre, nulle mauvaise foi ne réussiront jamais à déprécier tout à fait. Elle les répéta, avec exactement la même légère insistance sur le dernier mot, comme si elle était la première à les dire…”

Atonement

“J'aurais dû traverser l'existence avec ce privilège que donne la beauté, de pouvoir prendre les hommes et les jeter. Au lieu de quoi c'étaient eux qui m'abandonnaient ou mouraient. Ou bien se mariaient.”

Atonement

Ian McEwan livre Opération Sweet Tooth

Sweet Tooth

Ian McEwan Citations

“Sans la foi, que le monde avait dû lui paraître grand ouvert, magnifique et terrifiant !”

“Ils étaient au-delà du présent, en dehors du temps, sans souvenirs et sans futur. Il n'y avait plus qu'une sensation qui effaçait tout, excitante et envahissante, et le son de l'étoffe sur l'étoffe, de la peau sur l'étoffe, tandis que leurs membres se coulaient l'un par-dessus l'autre dans cette lutte sensuelle et sans relâche.”

L'intérêt de l'enfant

“Vous n'avez tué personne aujourd'hui? Mais combien en avez-vous laissé mourir?”

Atonement

“Ne jamais alimenter soi-même la polémique.”

Atonement

“Rien de plus déraisonnable que de coucher avec la femme de son patron.”

Solaire, 2010

“Un verbe conjugué au présent pour exposer une position de principe peut se transformer en constat.”

Solaire, 2010

Ian McEwan livre Amsterdam

Amsterdam, 1998

“Tout admettre, ne pas faire de choix, revient au même, à mon avis, que de ne croire en rien.”

Ian McEwan livre Les Chiens noirs

Les Chiens noirs, 1992

“Lire et écrire sont des activités abstraites, mais uniquement dans la mesure où on peut dire que parler une langue est une activité abstraite.”

Ian McEwan livre L'Enfant volé

L'Enfant volé, 1987

Ian McEwan: Citations en anglais

“And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.”

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

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

Source: Atonement

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

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

Source: Atonement

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

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

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.”

Ian McEwan livre On Chesil Beach

Source: On Chesil Beach

“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.”

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

Source: Atonement

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

Ian McEwan livre Enduring Love

Source: Enduring Love

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

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

Source: Atonement

“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.”

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

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

Source: Atonement

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

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

Source: Atonement

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

Ian McEwan livre On Chesil Beach

Page 166.
Source: On Chesil Beach (2007)

“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.”

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

Source: Atonement

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

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

Source: Atonement

“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”

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

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.”

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

Source: Atonement

“She lay in the dark and knew everything.”

Ian McEwan Saturday

Source: Saturday

“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.”

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

Source: Atonement

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

Ian McEwan livre On Chesil Beach

Source: On Chesil Beach

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

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

Source: Atonement

“come back, come back to me”

“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.”

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

Source: Atonement

“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.”

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

Source: Atonement

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

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

Source: Atonement

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

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

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.”

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

Source: Atonement

“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.”

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

Source: Atonement

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

Ian McEwan Saturday

Source: Saturday

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

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

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.”

Ian McEwan livre Expiation

Source: Atonement