I Like Ideas. I Find Them More

The Telephone Ringing Gave Me A Dreadful Start. I Have Never Got Used To This Machine, The Way It Crouches So Malevolently, Ready To Start Clamouring For Attention When You Least Expect It, Like A Mad Baby.

Happiness Was Different In Childhood. It Was So Much Then A Matter Simply Of Accumulation, Of Taking Things - New Experiences, New Emotions - And Applying Them Like So Many Polished Tiles To What Would Someday Be The Marvellously Finished Pavilion Of The Self.

I Have Never Really Got Used To Being On This Earth. Sometimes I Think Our Presence Here Is Due To A Cosmic Blunder, That We Were Meant For Another Planet Altogether, With Other Arrangements, And Other Laws, And Other, Grimmer Skies. I Try To Imagine It, Our True Place, Off On The Far Side Of The Galaxy, Whirling And Whirling. And The Ones Who Were Meant For Here, Are They Out There, Baffled And Homesick, Like Us? No, They Would Have Become Extinct Long Ago. How Could They Survive, These Gentle Earthlings, In A World That Was Made To Contain Us.

All A Work Of Art Can Do Is Present The Surface. I Can't Know The Insides Of People. I Know Very Little About The Inside Of Myself.

Ian Mcewan Is A Very Good Writer; The First Half Of Atonement Alone Would Ensure Him A Lasting Place In English Letters.