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"He came to find her, wanting what everyone wanted, and what only free-thinking people, not the supernatural, could give. Meaning."
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"Thought, if I may put it, is the man behind the possession, appearance, things we like, things we hate and the very epitome of life."

"Your subconscious mind is the universal mind with a universal consciousness."

"Absolute is infinite so there is no absolute truth. There is truth that you can see in infinite ways and make your own."

"Every aspect of your life will be enlivened when you start to think and communicate with your heart and mind in cohesive coordinated harmony."

"Think about yourself because no one has time to think about you. Everyone is busy thinking about themselves."

"I don't claim to know everything, Wally. I only claim that everything can eventually be known."

"I don't know who you are or where you are, but I know your deep driving desires. I am writing to you to make your life a little easier and better."

"There are two kinds of people:those who learned to love and those who didn't."

"Any education that doesn't allow you to think freely is not an education but a prison."

"I came to this world to bloom and spread my love to fill the world with happiness."
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."


"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."


"But this inglorious revolution wasn't for me. I didn't want a sex shop in every town."


"Waiting. Simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached."


"Becoming drunk is a journey that generally elates him in the early stages-he's good company, expansive, mischievous and fun, the famous old poet, almost as happy listening as talking. But once the destination is met, once established up there on that unsunny plateau, a fully qualified drunk, the nastier muses, the goblins of aggression, paranoia, self-pity take control. The expectation now is that an evening with John will go bad somehow, unless everyone around is prepared to toil at humouring and flattering and hours of frozen-faced listening. No one will be."


"Perhaps I'd been a slow developer, but I was well into my forties before I realized that you don't have to comply with a request just because it's reasonable or reasonably put. Age is the great dis-obliger. You can be yourself and say no."


"At best he read popular science magazines like the Scientific American he had now, to keep himself up-to-date, in layman's terms, with physics generally. But even then his concentration was marred, for a lifetime's habit made him inconveniently watchful for his own name. He saw it as if in bold. It could leap out at him from an unread double page of small print, and sometimes he could sense it coming before the page turn."
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