Ian McEwan, Atonement Quotes
The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.
Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?
And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.
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.
At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.
Above all, she wanted to look as though she had not given the matter a moment's thought, and that would take time.
In that shrinking moment he discovered that he had never hated anyone until now. It was a feeling as pure as love, but dispassionate and icily rational.
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.
He had never before felt so self-consciously young, nor experienced such appetite, such impatience for the story to begin.
Waiting. Simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached.
She knew enough to recognize that memories were crowding in, and there was nothing he could do. They wouldn’t let him speak. She would never know what scenes were driving that turmoil.
Her purity of spirit would never be in doubt, though she moved through a blemished world.
It was always the view of my parents, " Emily said, "that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people.
