Quotes from Ian Mcewan

Europe was not simply a union that chiefly benefited large corporations. The history of the continental member states was vastly different from our own. They had suffered violent revolutions, invasions, occupations and dictatorships. They were therefore only too willing to submerge their identities in a common cause directed from Brussels. We, on the other hand, had lived unconquered for nearly a thousand years. Soon, we would live freely again.

It can happen sometimes, with those who brood on an injustice, that a taste for revenge can usefully combine with a sense of obligation.

And perhaps that was typical of a certain . . . imbalance in their friendship that had always been there and which Clive had been aware of somewhere in his heart and had always pushed away, disliking himself for unworthy thoughts. Until now.

No child, still less a foetus, has ever mastered the art of small talk, or would ever want to. It's an adult device, a covenant with boredom and deceit.

W]ieder stieg ein unbestimmtes Gefühl von Frustration und Sehnsucht in mir auf bei dem Gedanken, dass ich das falsche Leben führte.

A partir de cierta edad, un trayecto por la ciudad se vuelve ingratamente meditabundo. Las direcciones de los muertos se amontonan.

How easy it was to drift through an unchosen life, in a succession of reactions to events. He

What is pan but a deceitful benediction on the vulgar and unhealthy fried? Where else might one fry his scallops with chilli and lime juice? In an egg timer?

una persona es, entre todo lo demás, una cosa material, que se rompe fácilmente pero que no es fácil recomponer.

Her forehead, so high and oval, reminded him of how Shakespeare was supposed to look. He was not certain how to put this to her.

And foe-of-convenience, the United States, barely the hope of the world, guilty of torture, helpless before its sacred text conceived in an age of powdered wigs, a constitution as unchallengeable as the Koran. Its nervous population obese, fearful, tormented by inarticulate anger, contemptuous of governance, murdering sleep with every new handgun. Africa

At times this biography made him comfortably nostalgic for a verdant, horse-drawn, affectionate England; at others he was faintly depressed by the way a whole life could be contained by a few hundred pages - bottled, like homemade chutney. And by how easily an existence, its ambitions, networks of family and friend, all its cherished stuff, solidly possessed, could so entirely vanish.

Not blemishes. Adornments.

The sound was so icy and bleak that he imagined his daughter had seen in her dreams the unavoidable future, all the sorrow and confusion to come, and he felt himself shrink in horror. But the moment passed, and soon Sebastian and Monica sank again, or they rose, for there seemed to be no physical dimensions in the space they swam or tumbled through, only sensation, only pleasure so focused, so pointed it was a reminder of pain.

She turned her face into the pillow and let her tears drain into it, and felt that yet more was lost, when there was no witness to her sorrow.

It's in me alone that my parents forever mingle, sweetly, sourly, along separate sugar-phosphate backbones, the recipe for my essential self. I also blend John and Trudy in my daydreams—like every child of estranged parents, I long to remarry them, this base pair, and so unite my circumstances to my genome.

From where I am, you and my mother and the world are all one. Hyperbole, I know. The world is also full of wonders, which is why I'm foolishly in love with it. And I love and admire you both. What I'm saying is, I'm fearful of rejection.

He turned out to be a tender and considerate lover, despite his unfortunate, sharply angled pubic bone, which first time hurt like hell. He apologised for it, as one might for a mad but distant relative. By which I mean he was not particularly embarrassed. We settled the matter by making love with a folded towel between us, a remedy I sensed he had often used before.

Mace leaned on his shovel and did a passable imitation. 'I think we'd rather not.' Very good, guv'nor. I'll remember that next time. Divigation was nice. Where'd you get that one? He swallowed a ****ing dictionary, Corporal Nettle said proudly.

I experienced a sudden ache -- part desolation, part panic -- to observe the speed with which this mate, this familiar, was transforming herself into a separate person.

Csakhogy egy ilyen város mindig kitermeli az álmatlanjait; maga is álmatlan szervezÅ'dés, örökké éneklÅ' vezetékekkel; sok millió lakója között mindig akadnak olyanok, akik kifelé bámulnak az ablakon; nem pedig alszanak, mint szoktak. És minden éjjel mások. Hogy most éppen Å', és nem más, az merÅ' véletlen.

The very word 'history' conjured a dull success of thrones and murderous clerical wrangling.

Yes, her childlessness was a fugue in itself, a flight- this was the habitual theme she was trying now to resist- a flight from her proper destiny. Her failure to become a woman, as her mother understood the term.

How would that constitute an ending? What service or hope or satisfaction could a reader draw from such an account? Who would want to believe that, except in the service of the bleakest realism? I couldn't do it to them. I'm too old, too frightened, too much in love with the shred of the life I have remaining. I no longer possess the lavage of my pessimism. When I am dead, and the Marshall's are dead, we will exist as my inventions.