Atonement ian mcewan quotes

“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.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

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

“Was everyone else really as alive as she was?...

If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone’s thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone’s claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was.

One could drown in irrelevance.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“...falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement