Ian McEwan Short Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

View all Ian McEwan Quotes
One has to have the courage of one's pessimism.

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

Ian McEwan
The lost child was everyone's property. But Stephen was alone.

Ian McEwan
Falling in love could be achieved in a single word — a glance.

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

Ian McEwan
What was it with men, that they found elementary logic so difficult?

Ian McEwan
Arguing with a dead man in a lavatory is a claustrophobic experience.

Ian McEwan
Daylight seemed then to be the physical manifestation of common sense.

Ian McEwan
Nations are never virtuous, though they might sometimes think they are.

Ian McEwan
We need to play out our fears within the safe confines of the imaginary.

Ian McEwan
Observing human variety can give pleasure, but so too can human sameness.

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

Ian McEwan
Novels help us to resist the temptation to think of the past as deficient.

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

Ian McEwan
I did not kill my father, but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way.

Ian McEwan
The luxury of being half-asleep, exploring the fringes of psychosis in safety.

Ian McEwan
Briony began to understand the chasm that lay between an idea and its execution

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

Ian McEwan
Writers are said to have superstitions and little rituals. Readers have them too.

Ian McEwan
And feeling clever, I've always thought, is just a sigh away from being cheerful.

Ian McEwan
No one knew about the squirrel's skull beneath her bed, but no one wanted to know.

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

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

Ian McEwan
I was an intimate sort of child who never spoke up in groups. I preferred close friends.

Ian McEwan
I've yet to meet somebody who said, 'Your stories are so revolting I couldn't read them.'

Ian McEwan