Ian McEwan Quotes

Novels without female characters were a lifeless desert.

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

I'm holding back, delaying the information. I'm lingering in the prior moment because it was a time when other outcomes were still possible.

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

The world should take note: not everything is getting worse.

The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.

I think the novel, its business is the investigation of human nature.

Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?

When there are no consequences, being wrong is simply a diversion.

Not being boring is quite a challenge.

Shall there be womanly times? Or shall we die?

Writing a novel resembles a journey with only the sketchiest of maps.

I wouldn't mind being the lead guitarist in an incredibly successful rock band. However, I don't play the guitar.

A story lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken

Could it ever be explained, how matter becomes conscious?

Oblivion seemed the only reasonable option.

When its gone, you'll know what a gift love was. you'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.

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

That love which does not build a foundation on good sense is doomed.

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

Love doesn't grow at a steady rate, but advances in surges, bolts, wild leaps, and this was one of those.

What is lawful is not always identical to what is right.

He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit.

Self-consciousness is the destroyer of erotic joy.

You can tell a lot from a person's nails. When a life starts to unravel, they're among the first to go.

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.

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

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

True intelligence requires fabulous imagination.

The moment you lose curiosity in the world, you might as well be dead.

...falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance.