Atonement Mcewan Quotes & Sayings

Was it possible that i was, in the modern term, in denial? — Ian McEwan

I'll wait for you. Come back.
The words were not meaningless, but they didn't touch him now.
It was clear enough - one person waiting for another was like an arithmetical sum, and just as empty of emotion.
Waiting.
Simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached. Waiting was a heavy word. — Ian McEwan

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

McEwan's Atonement ... truly dazzles, proving to be as much about the art and morality of writing as it is about the past ... . The middle section of Atonement, the two vividly realized set pieces of Robbie's trek to the Channel and Briony's experiences with the wounded evacuees of Dunkirk, would alone have made an outstanding novel ... . There is wonderful writing throughout as McEwan weaves his many themes - the accidents of contingency, the sins of absent fathers, class oppression - into his narrative, and in a magical love scene. — Noah Richler

What a joy it is to read a book that shocks one into remembering just how high one's literary standards should be. ... a tour de force by one of England's best novelists ... . Atonement is a spectacular book; as good a novel - and more satisfying ... - than anything McEwan has written ... .sublimely written narrative ... . The Dunkirk passage is a stupendous piece of writing, a set piece that could easily stand on its own. ... — Noah Richler

The cost of oblivius daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realigment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.
Her reverie, once rich in plausible details, had become a passing silliness before the hard mass of the actual.
It was difficult to come back. — Ian McEwan

i'm going mad, i told myself. let me not be mad. — Ian McEwan

How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all. — Ian McEwan

It's good to get your hands dirty a bit and to test how you see things at a given point. And it's very pleasing after writing something like 'Atonement' or 'On Chesil Beach,' which are historical, to get involved in some plausible re-enactment of the here and now. — Ian McEwan

Since my adaptation of Ian McEwan's 'Atonement,' I get sent a lot of novels that people think will work as movies. So every now and then I make a point of sitting down and reading a couple of them. — Christopher Hampton

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. — Ian McEwan