Quotes by Ian McEwan

“When it's gone, you'll know what a gift love was. You'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.”

“There's a taste in the air, sweet and vaguely antiseptic, that reminds him of his teenage years in these streets, and of a general state of longing, a hunger for life to begin that from this distan...”

“The anticipation and dread he felt at seeing her was also a kind of sensual pleasure, and surrounding it, like an embrace, was a general elation--it might hurt, it was horribly inconvenient, no goo...”

“Finally he spoke the three simple words that no amount of bad art or bad faith can every quite cheapen. She repeated them, with exactly the same slight emphasis on the second word, as though she we...”

“Everyone knew as much as they needed to know to be happy.”

“The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse. ”

“This is how the entire course of a life can be changed: by doing nothing.”

“And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.”

“If life was a dream, then dying must be the moment when you woke up. It was so simple it must be true. You died, the dream was over, you woke up. That's what people meant when they talked about goi...”

“He knew these last lines by heart and mouthed them now in the darkness. My reason for life. Not living, but life. That was the touch. And she was his reason for life, and why he must survive.”

“I've heard it argued that long ago pain begat consciousness...Adversity forced awareness on us, and it works, it bites us when we go too near the fire, when we love too hard. Those felt sensations ...”

“Adversity forced awareness on us, and it works, it bites us when we go too near the fire, when we love too hard. Those felt sensations are the beginning of the invention of the self. And if that wo...”

“Above all, she wanted to look as though she had not given the matter a moment's thought, and that would take time.”

“When he thought of her, it rather amazed him, that he had let that girl with her violin go. Now, of course, he saw that her self-effacing proposal was quite irrelevant. All she had needed was the c...”

“When love dies and marriage lies in ruins, the first casualty is honest memory, decent, impartial recall of the past. Too inconvenient, too damning of the present. It's the spectre of old happiness...”

“When she found a place of her ownand packed her bags he asked her to marry him. She kissed him, and quoted in his ear,"He married a woman to stop her getting away, Now shes there all day.”

“We go on our hands and knees and crawl our way towards the truth”

“Clive was losing sensation in his feet, and as he stamped them the rhythm gave him back the ten note falling figure, ritardando, a cor anglais, and rising softly against it, contrapuntally, cellos ...”

“He would work through the night and sleep until lunch. There wasn't really much else to do. Make something, and die.”

“Dearest Cecilia, Youd be forgiven for thinking me mad, the way I acted this afternoon. The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence, Cee, and I dont think I can blame the heat.”