Ian McEwan is a very good writer; the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters.

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.

All my life I have lied. I lied to escape, I lied to be loved, I lied for placement and power; I lied to lie. It was a way of living; lies are life's almost-anagram.

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.

Everything we do is tinged with the knowledge that this may be the last time that we will do this, and that makes what we're doing incredibly sweet.

We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.

To take possession of a city of which you are not a native you must first fall in love there.

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.

The present offers itself to our touch for only an instant of time and then eludes the senses.

When I am in pain, I must know that beauty always has been and always will be. This is as close to eternity as I need to be.

The best form of saying is doing.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

No one should notice how your eyes are done or the color of your eyeshadow. They should just notice you and notice that you're beautiful, that you have beautiful eyes.

I mean to retire, where nobody will have heard about my special skills. And conversation is mainly about the weather.

What Christian love cannot do is effected by a common hatred.

Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.

Your birth was no mistake or mishap, and your life is no fluke of nature. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He was not at all surprised by your birth. In fact, he expected it.

My tactics were, by God's aid, to employ every means to make it clear what the requirement of Christianity truly is.