We go on our hands and knees and crawl our way towards the truth

— Ian McEwan

When he thought of her, it rather amazed him, that he had let that girl with her violin go. Now, of course, he saw that her self-effacing proposal was quite irrelevant. All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them. Love and patience-if only he had had them both at once-would surely have seen them both through.

— Ian McEwan

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

— Ian McEwan

When love dies and marriage lies in ruins, the first casualty is honest memory, decent, impartial recall of the past. Too inconvenient, too damning of the present. It's the specter of old happiness at the feast of failure and desolation. So, against that headwind of forgetfulness I want to place my little candle of truth and see how far it throws its light.

— Ian McEwan

When she found a place of her own and packed her bags he asked her to marry him. She kissed him, and quoted in his ear,"He married a woman to stop her getting away, Now she’s there all day.

— Ian McEwan

When the wounded were screaming, you dreamed of sharing a little house somewhere, of an ordinary life, of a family line, connection. All around him, men were walking silently with their thoughts, reforming their lives, making resolutions. If I ever get out of this lot... They could never be counted, the dreamed-up children, mentally conceived on the walk into Dunkirk, and later made flesh.

— Ian McEwan

When they kissed she immediately felt his tongue, tensed and strong, pushing past her teeth, like some bully shouldering his way into a room. Entering her.

— Ian McEwan

Where the human need for order meets the 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

While my friends struggled and calculated, I reached a solution by a set of floating steps that were partly visual, partly just a feeling for what was right. It was hard to explain how I knew what I knew.

— Ian McEwan

Writers owed their readers a duty of care, of mercy.

— Ian McEwan