Quotes from Ian Mcewan

One great inconvenience of death, according to Roland, lay in being removed from the story. Having followed it this far he needed to know how things would turn out.

could tell you similar stories of machine sadness.

We have many shelves of poetry at home, but still, it takes an effort to step out of the daily narrative of existence, draw that neglected cloak of stillness around you — and concentrate, if only for three or four minutes. Perhaps the greatest reading pleasure has an element of self-annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist.

Without a specific destination, the visitors chose routes as they might choose a colour

The term teenager had not long been invented, and it never occured to him that the separateness he felt, which was both painful and delicious, could be shared by anyone else.

Note care se straduiesc sa transmita o semnificatie umana limpede, dar nu semnifica nimic. Doar frumusete pura. Ori dragoste in forma ei cea mai vaga, cea mai larga, pentru toti oamenii, fara deosebire.

Wasted time in beautiful places, lingering joyfully just inside the gates of paradise with the world's colours aflame, always regretting the setting sun and the call home, the Edenic expulsion into the next day and its usual concerns.

What must it be, to burst out of deep infant sleep into the shocking singular fact of existence.

Robbie and Cecilia had been making love for years - by post. In their coded exchanges they had drawn close, but how artificial that closeness seemed now as they embarked on their small talk, their helpless catechism of polite query and response. As the distance opened up between them, they understood how far they had run ahead of themselves in their letters. This moment had been imagined and desired for too long, and could not measure up.

Nothing is so dishonourable in a civilised nation as to permit itself to be 'governed' without resistance by a reckless clique that has surrendered to depraved instinct.

all citizens deserve the regime they are willing to endure…

This state of mind brings a contentment he never finds with any passive form of entertainment. Books, cinema, even music can't bring him to this. Working with others is one part of it, but it's not all. This benevolent dissociation seems to require difficulty, prolonged demands on concentration and skills, pressure, problems to be solved, even danger. He feels calm, and spacious, fully qualified to exist. It's a feeling of clarified emptiness, of deep, muted joy.

There are these rare moments when musicians together touch something sweeter than they've ever found before in rehearsals or performance, beyond the merely collaborative or technically proficient, when their expression becomes as easy and graceful as friendship or love. This is when they give us a glimpse of what we might be, of our best selves, and of an impossible world in which you give everything you have to others, but lose nothing of yourself.

But the lovers are locked in, as only lovers can be.

She had a difficult case beginning in half an hour, a set of complicated marital claims and counterclaims that were set to absorb two weeks of her life. Both parties intended to remain exceedingly rich at the expense of the other. This was not the moment for poetry.

She had never lost that childhood pleasure in seeing pages covered in her own handwriting.

He was happy and therefore bound to succeed.

the unimaginable age of the mountains and the fine mesh of living things that lay across them would remind him that he was part of this order and insignificant within it, and he would be set free.

There are some decisions, even moral ones, that are formed in regions below conscious thought.

All that's really required is that anything the state does in relation to the arts is laid on the table where we can see it.

He needed that time edged with boredom in which fantasy could flourish. Though it still surprised her, she was to some extent familiar with the delicacy of masculine pride. Despite a surface assurance, men were easily offended. Their moods could swing wildly. Caught in the turbulence of the unacknowledged emotions, they tended to mask their uncertainty with aggression.

He suspected he had brushed against a fundamental law of the universe: such ecstasy must compromise his freedom. That was its price.

Good decisions came less through rational calculation, more from sudden good moods. But so too did some of his worst decisions.

It was either hilarious or it was tragic, that people should go about their daily business in the conventional way when they knew there was this.