To take possession of a city of which you are not a native you must first fall in love there.

Ian McEwan is a very good writer; the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters.

The trouble with you, Vic," he said, "is that you think of the world as a sort of huge museum with too many visitors allowed in.

If they give me the bloody prize, why can't they say nice things about me?

I like ideas. I find them more exciting than human behavior for the most part.

And indeed nothing had happened, a momentous nothing, just another of the great world's shrugs of indifference.

The secret of survival is a defective imagination.