527 Quotes by Ian McEwan

Unless, unless, unless – a wisp of a word, ghostly token of altered fate, bleating little iamb of hope, it drifts across my thoughts like a floater in the vitreous humour of an eye. Mere hope.

Now I must listen again to Claude’s set piece on menu terms, as if he’s the first ever to spot these unimportant absurdities. He lingers on “pan-fried.” What is pan but a deceitful benediction on the vulgar and unhealthy fried?

Words, as I’m beginning to appreciate, can make things true.

It’s in me alone that my parents forever mingle, sweetly, sourly, along separate sugar-phosphate backbones, the recipe for my essential self. I also blend John and Trudy in my daydreams – like every child of estranged parents, I long to remarry them, this base pair, and so unite my circumstances to my genome.

She had a knack or weakness for laughing boisterously at her own anecdotes – not, I thought, because she found herself funny, but because she thought that life needed celebrating and wanted others to join in.

Don’t unpack your heart. One detail tells the truth.

It’s beautiful here and we’re still unhappy.

We live alongside this torment and aren’t amazed when we still find happiness, even love. Artificial minds are not so well defended.

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 are the beginning of the invention of the self... God said, Let there be pain. And there was poetry. Eventually.