01c. 1948 ADHe had never before felt so self-consciously young, nor experienced such appetite, such impatience for the story to begin.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
02c. 1948 ADIt was always the view of my parents," Emily said, "that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
03c. 1948 ADBut when I was an energetic self-important 10-year-old and found myself in a roomful of grownups, I felt guilty, and thought it only polite to conceal the fun I was having elsewhere. When an aged figure addressed me – they were all aged – I worried that what showed in my face was pity.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
04c. 1948 ADThe constrained lives of his characters made me wonder how my own existence might appear in his hands.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
05c. 1948 ADAll day we've witnessed each other's crimes. You killed no one today? But how many did you leave to die?Ian McEwan / quote ↗
06c. 1948 ADGrowing up in a cathedral precinct, what did I know of the absurdities of communism, of how brave man and women in bleak and remote penal colonies were reduced to thinking day by day of nothing else beyond their own survival?Ian McEwan / quote ↗
07c. 1948 ADJokes against the legal profession were what the legal profession loved most.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
08c. 1948 ADOnly when you are grown up, perhaps only when you have children yourself, do you fully understand that your own parents had a full and intricate existence before you were born.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
09c. 1948 ADThe light of artistic creation is also blinding.The artist can’t see the suffering he causesto those around him. And the’ll neverunderstand the purity of his goal, how the heatof his invention won’t melt the ice in his heart.He must be ruthless!No religion, no purpose except this:Make something perfect before you die.Life is short, art is for all timeIan McEwan / quote ↗
10c. 1948 ADIn some respect Journalism is like science, the best ideas were one that survived and strengthened by opposition.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
11c. 1948 ADBut this inglorious revolution wasn't for me. I didn't want a sex shop in every town.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
12c. 1948 ADShe raised one hand and flexed its fingers and wondered, as she had sometimes before, how this thing, this machine for gripping, this fleshy spider on the end of her arm, came to be hers, entirely at her command. Or did it have some little life of its own? She bent her finger and straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
13c. 1948 ADShe bent her finger and straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
14c. 1948 ADThese clever, amoral, inventive, destructive men, single-minded, selfish, emotionally cool, coolly attractive. I think I preferred them to the love of Jesus. They were so necessary, and not only to me. Without them we would still be living in mud huts, waiting to invent the wheel.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
15c. 1948 ADIt is quite impossible these days to assume anything about people's educational level from the way they talk or dress or from their taste in music. Safest to treat everyone you meet as a distinguished intellectual.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
16c. 1948 ADEvery secret of the body was rendered up--bone risen through flesh, sacrilegious glimpses of an intestine or an optic nerve. From this new and intimate perspective, [Briony] 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 / quote ↗
17c. 1948 ADIt can happen sometimes, with those who brood on an injustice, that a taste for revenge can usefully combine with a sense of obligation.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
18c. 1948 ADRevenge may be exacted a hundred times over in one sleepless night. The impulse, the dreaming intention, is human, normal, and we should forgive ourselves. But the raised hand, the actual violent enactment, is cursed. The maths says so. There’ll be no reversion to the status quo ante, no balm, no sweet relief, or none that lasts. Only a second crime. Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves, Confucius said. Revenge unstitches a civilisation. It’s a reversion to constant, visceral fear.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
19c. 1948 ADBefore you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves, Confucius said. Revenge unstitches civilisation.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
20c. 1948 ADNow and then, an inch below the water's surface, the muscles of his stomach tightened involuntarily as he recalled another detail. A drop of water on her upper arm. Wet. An embroidered flower, a simple daisy, sewn between the cups of her bra. Her breasts wide apart and small. On her back, a mole half covered by a strap. When she climbed out of the pond a glimpse of the triangular darkness her knickers were supposed to conceal. Wet. He saw it, he made himself see it again. The way her pelvic bones stretched the material clear of the skin, the deep curve of her waist, her startling whiteness. When she reached for her skirt, a carelessly raised foot revealed a patch of soil on each pad of her sweetly diminished toes. Another mole the size of a farthing on her thigh and something purplish on her calf--a strawberry mark, a scar. Not blemishes. Adornments.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
21c. 1948 ADEspecially difficult when the first and best unconscious move of a dedicated liar is to persuade himself he's sincere. And once he's sincere, all deception vanishes.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
22c. 1948 ADIt's at moments like these in a game that the essentials of his character are exposed: narrow, ineffectual, stupid—and morally so. The game becomes an extended metaphor of character defect. Every error he makes is so profoundly, so irritatingly typical of himself, instantly familiar, like a signature, like a tissue scar or some deformation in a private place.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
23c. 1948 ADBecoming drunk is a journey that generally elates him in the early stages—he's good company, expansive, mischievous and fun, the famous old poet, almost as happy listening as talking. But once the destination is met, once established up there on that unsunny plateau, a fully qualified drunk, the nastier muses, the goblins of aggression, paranoia, self-pity take control. The expectation now is that an evening with John will go bad somehow, unless everyone around is prepared to toil at humouring and flattering and hours of frozen-faced listening. No one will be.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
24c. 1948 ADOr he was simply pretending—like many drinkers, he liked to think each new day drew a line under the day before.Ian McEwan / quote ↗
