Quotes from Ian Mcewan

Lovers arrive at their first kisses with scars as well as longings. They're not always looking for advantage. Some need shelter, others press only for the hyperreality of ecstasy, for which they'll tell outrageous lies or make irrational sacrifice. But they rarely ask themselves what they need or want.

Biology is destiny, and destiny is digital, and in this case binary. It was bleakly simple. No one exclaims at the moment of one's dazzling coming-out, It's a person! Instead: It's a girl, It's a boy. Pink or blue.

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.

And he saw the studio he was about to abandon for his bed as it might have appeared in a documentary film about himself that would reveal to a curious world how a masterpiece was born.

Other women cloy/The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry/Where most she satisfies.

My identity will be my precious, my only true possession, my access to the only truth.

I met evil and discovered God. I call it my discovery, but of course, it's nothing new, and it's not mine. Everyone has to make it for himself. People use different languages to describe it. I suppose all the great world religions began with individuals making inspired contact with a spiritual reality and then trying to keep that knowledge alive. Most of it gets lost in rules and practices and addiction to power.

Voleva fuggire, buttarsi da sola sul letto a faccia in giù e assaporare il dolore cocente di quel momento, e poi seguire con il pensiero il diramarsi di ogni possibile conseguenza fino al punto esatto che precedeva la devastazione. Aveva bisogno di contemplare a occhi chiusi la ricchezza di quello che aveva perso, di quello che aveva ceduto, e di prefigurarsi il nuovo stato delle cose.

It wasn't hatred that killed the innocents but faith, that famished ghost, still revered, even in the mildest quarters.

It was not always the case that a large minority comprising the weakest members of society wore special clothes, were freed from the routines of work and of many constraints on their behaviour and were able to devote much of their time to play. It should be remembered that childhood is not a natural occurrence. There was a time when children were treated like small adults. Childhood is an invention, a social construct, made possible by society as it increased in sophistication and resource.

the exclamation mark was the first resort of those who shout to make themselves clearer.

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves, Confucius said.

There are not many options for the evening that follows an afternoon of drinking. Only two in fact: remorse, or more drinking and then remorse.

A fejed, az agyad az nem olyan, mint egy büfékocsi, hogy rendbe teszed, és kidobálod az üres konzervdobozokat az ablakon. Az nem valami hely, inkább olyan, mint egy folyó, mindig mozgásban és változásban van. Egy folyóban nem lehet rendet rakni.

They had never discussed feelings, and had no language for them now.

My opinion," he said, "is that the haiku is the literary form of the future.

gençtim aptald?m, bir düÅŸ yiyordu içimi/ kefaret ç?lg?nl?km??, yükü aptallar ta??rm??

No child is an island. She thought her responsibilities ended at the court room walls. But how could they? He came to find her, wanting what everyone wanted, and what only free-thinking people, not the supernatural, could give. Meaning.

Old Europa tosses in her dreams. She wants to help but she doesn't want to share or lose what she has.

I, o Bože, voleo sam i ja nju. Bez obzira na to koliko sam mislio na Klarisu, u se?anju ili o?ekivanju, to što sam je doživeo ponovo, osetio i ?uo, ona neosporna ljubav koja je strujala izme?u nas, to zapravo životinjsko prisustvo, uvek bi me, mada poznato, uzdrmalo kao neo?ekivano.

The other day, Thomas reminded me of the famous Latin tag from Virgil's Aeneid. Sunt lacrimae rerum – there are tears in the nature of things.

The details were apt and convincing enough, but surely not so very difficult to marshal if you were halfway observant and had the patience to write them all down.

Growing up in a cathedral precinct, what did I know of the absurdities of communism, of how brave man and women in bleak and remote penal colonies were reduced to thinking day by day of nothing else beyond their own survival?

But even I know that love doesn't steer by logic, nor is power distributed evenly. Lovers arrive at their first kisses with scars as well as longings. They're not always looking for advantage. Some need shelter, others press only for the hyperreality of ecstasy, for which they'll tell outrageous lies or make irrational sacrifice. But they rarely ask themselves what they need or want.