Ian McEwan quotes

Ian McEwan is a renowned British novelist and screenwriter, known for his psychologically intricate and provocative works. His novels often explore themes of love, morality, and the impact of past events on present lives. He has received numerous literary awards and critical acclaim for his contribution to contemporary literature. Here are 129 of his quotes:

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.

Ian McEwan

I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life. Cee.

Ian McEwan

It wasn't torpor that kept her - she was often restless to the point of irritability. She simply liked to feel that she was prevented from leaving, that she was needed.

Ian McEwan

However, withered, I still feel myself to be exactly the same person I've always been. Hard to explain that to the young. we may look truly reptilian, but we're not a separate tribe.

Ian McEwan

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

Ian McEwan

A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.

Ian McEwan

We know so little about each other. We lie mostly submerged, like ice floes, with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white.

Ian McEwan

It is not the first duty of the novelist to provide blueprints for insurrection, or uplifting tales of successful resistance for the benefit of the opposition. The naming of what is there is what is important.

Ian McEwan

How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime.

Ian McEwan

Dearest Cecilia, You'd 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 don't think I can blame the heat.

Ian McEwan

At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.

Ian McEwan

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.

Ian McEwan

These were everyday sounds magnified by darkness. And darkness was nothing - it was not a substance, it was not a presence, it was no more than an absence of light.

Ian McEwan

Nothing that can be, can come between me and the full prospect of my hopes.

Ian McEwan

He had never before felt so self-consciously young, nor experienced such appetite, such impatience for the story to begin.

Ian McEwan

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

Ian McEwan

Falling in love could be achieved in a single word--a glance.

Ian McEwan

Find you, love you, marry you, and live without shame.

Ian McEwan

It was not generally realized that what children mostly wanted was to be left alone.

Ian McEwan

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.

Ian McEwan

Nothing was to be lost by beginning at the beginning...

Ian McEwan

Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destory?

Ian McEwan