527 Quotes by Ian McEwan

She was not in love, or out of love – she felt nothing. She just wanted to be here alone in the dusk against the bulk of her giant tree.

She knew very well that people fell out, even stormily, and then made up. But she did not know how to start – she simply did not have the trick of it, the row that cleared the air, and could never quite believe that hard words could be unsaid or forgotten.

Now, I’m an atheist. I really don’t believe for a moment that our moral sense comes from a god.

A rather insistent cross-examiner asks a pathologist whether he can be absolutely sure that a certain patient was dead before he began the autopsy. The pathologist says he’s absolutely certain. Oh, but how can you be so sure? Because, the pathologist says, his brain was in a jar sitting on my desk. But, says the cross-examiner, could the patient still have been alive nevertheless? Well, comes the answer, it’s possible he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.

But on this particular morning, weary of books and birdsong and country peace, Edward took his rickety childhood bike from the shed, raised the saddle, pumped up the tired and set off with no particular plan. He had a pound note and two half crowns in his pocket and all he wanted was forward movement.

When people ask, “Is there any advice you’d give a young writer?,” I say write short stories. They afford lots of failure. Pastiche is a great way to start.

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.

Memory’s got nothing to do with years. You remember what you remember.

Chi prende in mano un violino, o qualunque altro strumento, compie un gesto di speranza che comporta il desiderio di un futuro.