“It's a matter of dishonour, and when it gets out, which it's bound to, this will be the one act you'll be remembered for. Everything else you achieved will be irrelevant. Your reputation will rest only on this, because ultimately… — Ian McEwan Copy Share Image
“As you will see, we do not believe that artists have an obligation to strike up attitudes to the war. Indeed, they are wise and right to ignore it and devote themselves to other subjects. Since artists are politically impotent, they must use this time to develop at deeper emotional levels. Your work, your war work, is to cultivate your… — Ian McEwan Copy Share
You could say that all novels are spy novels and all novelists are spy masters. — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life. — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
“It is shaming sometimes, how the body will not, or cannot, lie about emotions.” — Ian McEwan Copy Share Image
“While my friends struggled and calculated, I reached a solution by a set of floating steps that were partly visual, partly just a feeling… — Ian McEwan Copy Share Image
“Once, on a walk by a river- Eskdale in low reddish sunlight, with a dusting of snow- his daughter quoted to him an opening verse by her favourite poet. Apparently, not many young women loved Phillip Larkin the way she did. 'If I were to construct a religion/ I should make use of water.' She said she liked the laconic… — Ian McEwan Copy Share
“Perhaps it's one of those cases of a microcosm giving you the whole world. Like a spode dinner plate. Or a single cell. Or, as daisy says, like a Jane Austen novel. When player and listener together know the route so well, the pleasure is in the deviation, the unexpected turn against the grain. To see a world in a… — Ian McEwan Copy Share
Who you get, and how it works out- there's so much luck involved, as well as the million branching consequences of your conscious choice… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
“On Chesil Beach he could have called out to Florence, he could have gone after her. He did not know, or would not have cared to know, that as she ran away from him, certain in her distress that she was about to lose him, she had never loved him more, or more hopelessly, and that the sound of his… — Ian McEwan Copy Share
It was always the view of my parents...that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people. — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
I apologize for being obvious, but every time I watch the curtain come down on even a halfway decent production of a Shakespeare play… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
I would rather be physically disabled obviously than mentally. I would rather be paraplegic than nuts. And it is a terrifying prospect and actually the longer we live the more likely it is that that's how we will go and that's a very painful thing to contemplate. — Ian Mcewan Copy Share
