All Ian Mcewan Quotes
- We know so little about each other. We lie mostly submerged, like ice floes, with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white. Cool
- Cecilia wondered, as she sometimes did when she met a man for the first time, if this was the one she was going to marry,… Cecilia
- It was thought, perception, sensations that interested her, the conscious mind as a river through time, and how to represent its onward roll, as well… All
- We go on our hands and knees and crawl our way towards the truth Crawl
- Had it taken her this long to discover that she lacked some simple mental trick that everyone else had, a mechanism so ordinary that no… All
- Briony began to understand the chasm that lay between an idea and its execution Began
- ...the world she ran through loved her and would give her what she wanted and would let it happen. Give
- Above all, she wanted to look as though she had not given the matter a moment's thought, and that would take time. All
- In a language as idiomatically stressed as English, opportunities for misreadings are bound to arise. By a mere backward movement of stress, a verb can… Act
- I like to think that it isn't weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair, ... Act
- I’ll wait for you. Come back. The words were not meaningless, but they didn’t touch him now. It was clear enough - one person waiting… Approached
- I'm holding back, delaying the information. I'm lingering in the prior moment because it was a time when other outcomes were still possible. Back Delaying
- It marked the beginning and, of course, an end. At that moment a chapter, no, a whole stage of my closed. Had I known, and… Allowed
- My needs were simple I didn't bother much with themes or felicitous phrases and skipped fine descriptions of weather, landscapes and interiors. I wanted characters… Believe
- And feeling clever, I've always thought, is just a sigh away from being cheerful. Always Thought
- There was, in my view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honour. No single element of an imagined world or any… Actual
- Daylight seemed then to be the physical manifestation of common sense. Common
- I was the basest of readers. All I wanted was my own world, and myself in it, given back to me in artful shapes and… Accessible
- I turned the pages so fast. And I suppose I was, in my mindless way, looking for a something, version of myself, a heroine I… Fast
- What was it with men, that they found elementary logic so difficult? Difficult
- Novels without female characters were a lifeless desert. Character
- Four or five years - nothing at all. But no one over thirty could understand this peculiarly weighted and condensed time, from late teens to… Affair
- Love doesn't grow at a steady rate, but advances in surges, bolts, wild leaps, and this was one of those. Advances
- At the back of my mind I had a sense of us sitting about waiting for some terrible event, and then I would remember that… Already Happened
- The trouble with being a daydreamer who doesn’t say much is that the teachers at school, especially those who don’t know you very well, are… Amazing