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He had once felt light on the ground. He used to think his life was an open-ended adventure, he used to give things away, it amused him when the unexpected happened, benevolent coincidences used to bear him along. When had all that stopped?

— Ian McEwan The Child in Time (1987)

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More quotes by Ian McEwan

Nations are never virtuous, though they might sometimes think they are.

Solar (2010)

This is how the entire course of a life can be changed - by doing nothing.

On Chesil Beach (2007)

How can one understand the inner life of a character, real or fictional, without knowing the state of her finances?

Sweet Tooth (2012)

I did not kill my father, but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way.

The Cement Garden (1978)

You want a picture of futility? It's a tunnel in the desert, from nowhere to nowhere, four hundred and fifty feet long.

The Innocent (1990)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ian McEwan (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.