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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.

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.