527 Quotes by Ian McEwan

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

For children, childhood is timeless. It is always the present. Everything is in the present tense. Of course, they have memories. Of course, time shifts a little for them and Christmas comes round in the end. But they don't feel it. Today is what they feel, and when they say 'When I grow up,' there is always an edge of disbelief - how could they ever be other than what they are?

You could say that all novels are spy novels and all novelists are spy masters.

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

For the professors in the academy, for the humanities generally, misery is more amenable to analysis: happiness is a harder nut to crack.

Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and the beginning of morality

I want to live in a place where strangers rush to help someone in distress.

She loved him, though not at this particular moment.

I don't believe there's any inherent darkness at the center of religion at all. I think religion actually is a morally neutral force.