Quotes from book
Atonement

Atonement

Ian McEwanOriginal title 贖罪 (Japanese, 2001)

Atonement is a 2001 British metafiction novel written by Ian McEwan concerning the understanding of and responding to the need for personal atonement. Set in three time periods, 1935 England, Second World War England and France, and present-day England, it covers an upper-class girl's half-innocent mistake that ruins lives, her adulthood in the shadow of that mistake, and a reflection on the nature of writing.

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

Ian McEwan book Atonement

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 book Atonement

Source: Atonement

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

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

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

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

Ian McEwan book Atonement

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.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

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 book Atonement

Source: Atonement

“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.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

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.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

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

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

“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 book Atonement

Source: Atonement

“one could drown in irrelevance.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

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

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

“How easily this unthinking family love was forgotten.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

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.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

“come back, come back to me”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

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.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

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 book Atonement

Source: Atonement

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

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

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

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

“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 book Atonement

Source: Atonement

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