She had not thought it would be so easy to slip into the old roles. Cambridge had changed her fundamentally and she thought she was immune. No one in her family, however, noticed the transformation in her, and she was not able to resist the power of their habitual expectations. - Ian McEwan
Clive was losing sensation in his feet, and as he stamped them the rhythm gave him back the ten note falling figure, ritardando, a cor anglais, and rising softly against it, contrapuntally, cellos in mirror image. Her face in it. The end. - Ian McEwan
No one knows anything, really. It's all rented, or borrowed. - Ian McEwan
Private Latimer had become a monster, and he must have guessed this was so. Did a girl love him before? Could she continue to? - Ian McEwan
He came to find her, wanting what everyone wanted, and what only free-thinking people, not the supernatural, could give. Meaning. - Ian McEwan
Where the human need for order meetsthe human tendency to mayhem, where civilization runs smack against its discontents, you find friction, and a great deal of general wear and tear. - Ian McEwan
Memory's got nothing to do with years. You remember what you remember. - Ian McEwan
I'm sorry to disappoint you, but my experience belongs to me, not the collective bloody unconscious. - Ian McEwan
Either I've always spoken to her from the heart in times like this, or I never have and I don't know what it means. - Ian McEwan