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"She knew very well that people fell out, even stormily, and then made up. But she did not know how to start - she simply did not have the trick of it, the row that cleared the air, and could never quite believe that hard words could be unsaid or forgotten."
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"Marriage is a sacred-commitment."

"A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards."

"We are all connected in spirit, in love and in faith."

"Parent greatest gift to their children is their bond of love."

"It was too perfect to last,' so I am tempted to say of our marriage. But it can be meant in two ways. It may be grimly pessimistic - as if God no sooner saw two of His creatures happy than He stopped it ('None of that here!'). As if He were like the Hostess at the sherry-party who separates two guests the moment they show signs of having got into a real conversation. But it could also mean 'This had reached its proper perfection. This had become what it had in it to be. Therefore of course it would not be prolonged.' As if God said, 'Good; you have mastered that exercise. I am very pleased with it. And now you are ready to go on to the next."

"Those who don't care about the positive side of you, are too dangerous to have on your side."

"They said, "You'll never find someone like me again!" I thanked them for wishing me well."

"In some cases, it is the woman's stomach-not her heart-that has left her man for another."

"Try not to be the kind of friend who only makes friends when in desperate need of financial help."

"The key to every human heart is love."
Explore more quotes by Ian McEwan


"One important theme is the extent to which one can ever correct an error, especially outside any frame of religious forgiveness. All of us have done something we regret - how we manage to remove that from our conscience, or whether that's even possible, interested me."


"The childhood of a spoiled prince could be framed within half a page, a moonlit dash through sleepy villages was one rhythmically emphatic sentence, falling in love could be achieved in a single word - a glance. The pages of a recently finished story seemed to vibrate in her hand with all the life they contained."


"Virtue is too passive, too narrow. Virtue can motivate individuals, but for groups, societies, a whole civilisation, it's a weak force. Nations are never virtuous, though they might sometimes think they are."


"He came to find her, wanting what everyone wanted, and what only free-thinking people, not the supernatural, could give. Meaning."


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


"If life was a dream, then dying must be the moment when you woke up. It was so simple it must be true. You died, the dream was over, you woke up. That's what people meant when they talked about going to heaven. It was like waking up."


"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."
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