Ian Mcewan Quotes - Page 2

Oblivion seemed the only reasonable option.

It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.

Love doesn't grow at a steady rate, but advances in surges, bolts, wild leaps, and this was one of those.

The luxury of being half-asleep, exploring the fringes of psychosis in safety.

Finally, you had to measure yourself by other people - there really was nothing else. every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone taught you something about yourself.

What is lawful is not always identical to what is right.

A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.

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 were the one to say them first. He had no religious belief, but it was impossible not to think of an invisible presence or witness in the room, and that these words spoken aloud were like signatures on an unseen contract.

A story lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken

And she did not miss his presence so much as his voice on the phone. Even being lied to constantly, though hardly like love, was sustained attention; he must care about her to fabricate so elaborately and over such a long stretch of time. His deceit was a form of tribute to the importance of their marriage.

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

That love which does not build a foundation on good sense is doomed.

It is shaming sometimes how the body will not, or cannot, lie about emotions. Who, for decorum’s sake, has ever slowed his heart, or muted a blush?

This commonplace cycle of falling asleep and waking, in darkness, under private cover, with another creature, a pale soft tender mammal, putting faces together in a ritual of affection, briefly settled in the eternal necessities of warmth, comfort, safety, crossing limbs to draw nearer - a simple daily consolation, almost too obvious, easy to forget by daylight.

The world should take note: not everything is getting worse.

I wouldn't mind being the lead guitarist in an incredibly successful rock band. However, I don't play the guitar.

It's the essence of a degenerating mind periodically, to lose all sense of continuous self, and therefore any regard for what others think of your lack of continuity.

I believe the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction. It is the beautiful daughter of a rambling, bloated ill-shaven giant (but a giant who's a genius on his best days).

Reading groups, readings, breakdowns of book sales all tell the same story: when women stop reading, the novel will be dead.

From this new and intimate perspective, she learned a simple, obvious thing she had always known, and everyone knew; that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended.

Not being boring is quite a challenge.

Writing a novel resembles a journey with only the sketchiest of maps.

Could it ever be explained, how matter becomes conscious?

Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it's okay to be a boy; for girls it's like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading.

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