Quotes from Ian Mcewan

If someone where playing tennis you wouldn't walk onto the court and begin to have a conversion with them, likewise I think reading is at least as important as a game of tennis.

Unlike in Daisy's novels, moments of precise reckoning are rare in real life; questions of misinterpretations are not often resolved. Nor do they remain pressingly unresolved. They simply fade. People don't remember clearly, or they die, or the questions die and new ones take their place.

These names mean nothing to Perowne. But he understands how eminent poets, like senior consultants, live in a watchful, jealous world in which reputations are edgily tended and a man can be brought low by status anxiety. Poets, or at least this poet, are as earthbound as the rest.

Without faith, how open and beautiful and terrifying the world must have seemed

But hidden drawers, lockable diaries and cryptographic systems could not conceal from Briony the simple truth: she had no secrets. Her wish for a harmonious, organized world denied her the reckless possibilities of wrongdoing. Mayhem and destruction were too chaotic for her tastes, and she did not have it in her to be cruel.

Clive thought of his work in totality, of how varied and rich it seemed whenever he was able to raise his head and take the long perspective, how it represented in abstract a whole history of his lifetime. And still so much to do.

After a certain age, when the remaining years first take on their finite aspect, and you begin to feel for yourself the first chill, you watch a dying man with a closer, more brotherly interest.

He's weak and ignorant, scared of the way consequences of an action leap away from your control and breed new events, new consequences, until you're led to a place you never dreamed of and would never choose - a knife at the throat.

Auch dies ein vertrautes Element - das Grauen, das er nicht sehen kann. Aus sicherer Entfernung beobachtete Katastrophen. Dem vielfachen Tod zuschauen, aber niemanden sterben sehen. Kein Blut, keine Schreie, überhaupt keine menschlichen Gestalten, nur die willfährige, in die Leere entlassene Phantasie.

At last he could admit to himself that he had never met anyone he loved as much, that he had never found anyone, man or woman, who matched her seriousness.

The Western world may have been undergoing a steady transformation, the young may have thought they had discovered a new way of talking to each other, the old barriers were said to be crumbling from the base. But the famous 'hand on the shoulder' was still applied, perhaps less frequently, perhaps with less pressure.

Birth, death, and frailty in between. Rise and fall- this was the doctor's business, and it was literature's too.

So much for youthful idealism.

And I was with the man I loved and we were rabbiting on about how we were going to help change the world, and we were on our way home to start our lives together. I even remember thinking to myself, I've never been happier than this. This is it!

nothing, no one, beyond family reunions, near-weekly

We were the only customers downstairs in the shop and there were no windows and only two dim bulbs, without shades. There was a pleasant soporific smell, as though the books had stolen most of the air.

the beauty of poetic apprehension, the infinite joy of reason.

He needed that time edged with boredom in which fantasy could flourish.

intent on her phone, reading, tapping, frowning in the contemporary manner.

This sense of absence had been growing since Molly's funeral. It was wearing into him. Last night he had woken beside his sleeping wife and had to touch his own face to be assured he remained a physical entity.

Weit hinten in irgend einer Nasenhöhle hatte der Zufall aus Schleim eine zweistimmige Panflöte geformt, der wir gezwungen waren zu lauschen.

Or he was simply pretending—like many drinkers, he liked to think each new day drew a line under the day before.

Se alguma coisa acontecesse com Robbie, se Cecília e Robbie jamais pudessem ficar juntos... Sua tortura secreta e a comoção pública da guerra antes pareciam mundos separados, mas agora ela se dava conta de que a guerra poderia agravar seu crime ainda mais. A única solução concebível seria o passado não ter acontecido

By what logic or motivation or helpless surrender did we all, hour by hour, transport ourselves within a generation from the thrill of optimism at Berlin's falling Wall to the storming of the American Capitol?