Ian McEwan Zitate

„Ich bin noch immer nicht diesem Gefühl des leisen Stolzes, dem Gefühl der Anerkennung entwachsen, das sich einstellt, wenn Kinder einen bei der Hand nehmen.“

„Auch dies ein vertrautes Element - das Grauen, das er nicht sehen kann. Aus sicherer Entfernung beobachtete Katastrophen. Dem vielfachen Tod zuschauen, aber niemanden sterben sehen. Kein Blut, keine Schreie, überhaupt keine menschlichen Gestalten, nur die willfährige, in die Leere entlassene Phantasie.“

„Wie wohlhabend, wie einflussreich sie waren, wie sie prosperiert hatten unter einer Regierung, die sie beinahe siebzehn Jahre lang verachtet hatten! Talking ‚bout my generation. Diese Tatkraft, dieser unverschämte Dusel! Im Sozialstaat der Nachkriegszeit genährt von Milch und Honig des Staates, danach verwöhnt vom zaghaft-unschuldigen Wohlstand ihrer Eltern, mündig dann in einer Zeit der Vollbeschäftigung mit neuen Universitäten und bunten Taschentüchern, dem augusteischen Zeitalter des Rock ‚n’ Roll, der erschwinglichen Ideale. Als die Leiter hinter ihnen bröckelte, als der Staat seine Zitzen verweigerte und zum Hausdrachen wurde, saßen sie schon im trockenen, konsolidierten sich und ließen sich häusliche nieder, um dieses oder jenes zu bilden – Geschmack, Meinungen, Vermögen.“

„Weit hinten in irgend einer Nasenhöhle hatte der Zufall aus Schleim eine zweistimmige Panflöte geformt, der wir gezwungen waren zu lauschen.“

„Bitte keine magischen Zwergentrommler mehr', flehte er sie in einem Brief an, nachdem er seine Tirade abgelassen hatte. 'Keine Gespenster, Engel, Teufel oder Verwandlungen mehr. Wenn alles passieren kann, ist alles gleichgültig. Für mich ist das nichts als Kitsch.' / 'Du Dussel', tadelte sie ihn auf einer Postkarte, 'Du Erbsenzähler. Das ist Literatur, keine Physik!“

„[W]ieder stieg ein unbestimmtes Gefühl von Frustration und Sehnsucht in mir auf bei dem Gedanken, dass ich das falsche Leben führte.“

“In my dreams I kiss your cunt, your sweet wet cunt. In my thoughts I make love to you all day long.”

“Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?”

“It is shaming sometimes, how the body will not, or cannot, lie about emotions.”

“It is quite impossible these days to assume anything about people's educational level from the way they talk or dress or from their taste in music. Safest to treat everyone you meet as a distinguished intellectual.”

“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.”

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.”

“It was always the view of my parents… that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people.”

“It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.”

“The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.”

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

“… falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance.”

“A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.”

“Find you, love you, marry you, and live without shame.”

“I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life. Cee”

“You can tell a lot from a person's nails. When a life starts to unravel, they're among the first to go.”

“She lay in the dark and knew everything.”

“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.”

“It was not generally realized that what children mostly wanted was to be left alone.”

“No one knows anything, really. It's all rented, or borrowed.”

“come back, come back to me”

“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.”

“How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime.”

“That love which does not build a foundation on good sense is doomed.”

“But whathappened? The answer is simple: the lovers survive and flourish.”

“Dearest Cecilia, You’d be forgiven for thinking me mad, the way I acted this afternoon. The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence, Cee, and I don’t think I can blame the heat.”

“There's a taste in the air, sweet and vaguely antiseptic, that reminds him of his teenage years in these streets, and of a general state of longing, a hunger for life to begin that from this distance seems like happiness.”

“Not everything people did could be in a correct, logical order, especially when they were alone.”

“At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.”

“From this new and intimate perspective, she learned a simple, obvious thing she had always known, and everyone knew; that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended.”