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

— Ian McEwan , Saturday

Source: Saturday

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The luxury of being half-asleep, exploring the fringes of psychosis in safety." by Ian McEwan?

Ian McEwan 80

British author 1948

Related quotes

“Once in everyone's life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half asleep.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

Foreword to revised edition (1982)
One Man's Meat (1942)
Context: Once in everyone's life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half asleep. I think of those five years in Maine as the time when this happened to me … I was suddenly seeing, feeling, and listening as a child sees, feels, and listens. It was one of those rare interludes that can never be repeated, a time of enchantment. I am fortunate indeed to have had the chance to get some of it down on paper.

“Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

Source: Il mestiere di vivere: Diario 1935-1950

“He [the King of Morocco] spends half his time asleep and the rest of it buried between the legs of the fairer sex.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 237
Attributed

“Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

" In Time of 'The Breaking Of Nations'" http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hardy/poems/breaking.html (1915), lines 1-12, from Moments of Vision (1917); the title is derived from lines of Jeremiah 51:20: "Thou art my battle ax and weapons of war: for with thee will I break in pieces the nations."
Context: p>Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War's annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.</p