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Ian Mcewan

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“Watching him during the first several minutes of his delivery, Cecilia felt a pleasant sinking sensation in her stomach as she contemplated how deliciously self-destructive it would be, almost erotic, to be married to a man so nearly handsome, so hugely rich, so unfathomably stupid. He would fill her with his big-faced children, all of them loud, boneheaded boys with a passion for guns and football and aeroplanes.”

MenFirstsChildrenSelfBigsWould BePassionFeltBoysRichMinutesStupidFootballMarriedGunLoudPleasantDestructiveSensationsStomachHandsomeEroticBeing MarriedDeliverySinkingAeroplanesSelf Destructive
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“In a story you only had to wish, you only had to write it down and you could have the world...It seemed so obvious now that it was too late: a story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it. Reading a sentence and understanding it were the same thing; as with the crooking of a finger, nothing lay between them. There was no gap during which the symbols were unraveled.”

WorldWritingMindMeanStoriesFeelingsAbleFormReadingWishProcessUnderstandingWonderReaderLatePagesDown AndLaysFingersObviousSentencesSymbolsToo LateGapsCommonplaceWish YouThoughts And FeelingsTelepathy
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“There are these rare moments when musicians together touch something sweeter than they've ever found before in rehearsals or performance, beyond the merely collaborative or technically proficient, when their expression becomes as easy and graceful as friendship or love. This is when they give us a glimpse of what we might be, of our best selves, and of an impossible world in which you give everything to others, but lose nothing of yourself.”

WorldGivingSelfMomentsMightTogetherFoundEasyLosesImpossibleExpressionMusicianPerformancesGlimpseRehearsalBest SelfRare Moments
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“How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all.”

IfsFormTermImaginationImpossibleAchieveHigherLimitsTasksAbsolutesForgivingAtheistAppealsNovelistsOutcomesEntityAtonementAbsolute Power
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“It is photography itself that creates the illusion of innocence. Its ironies of frozen narrative lend to its subjects an apparent unawareness that they will change or die. It is the future they are innocent of. Fifty years on we look at them with the godly knowledge of how they turne dout after all - who they married, the date of their death - with no thought for who will one day be holding photographs of us.”

YearsLooksDiesSubjectsOne DayPhotographyMarriedIllusionPhotographInnocentInnocenceNarrativeIronyFiftyGodlyFrozenUnawareness
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“She bent her finger and then straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge. She brought her forefinger closer to her face and stared at it, urging it to move. It remained still because she was pretending... . And when she did crook it finally, the action seemed to start in the finger itself, not in some part of her mind.”

IfsMindStillsMomentsMightActionFacesMovingSecretMysteryEffectsMovedIntentionFingersWaveInstantPretendingBentDividingCrooksWaves Breaking
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“Finally he spoke the three simple words that no amount of bad art or bad faith can every quite cheapen. She repeated them, with exactly the same slight emphasis on the second word, as though she were the one to say them first. He had no religious belief, but it was impossible not to think of an invisible presence or witness in the room, and that these words spoken aloud were like signatures on an unseen contract.”

ThinkingFirstsArtThreeBeliefReligiousSimpleRoomsImpossibleAmountInvisibleWitnessSpokesContractsUnseenEmphasisSignaturesReligious BeliefSimple Words
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“I watched our friends' wary, intelligent faces droop at our tale. Their shock was a mere shadow of our own, resembling more the goodwilled imitation of that emotion, and for this reason it was a temptation to exaggerate, to throw a rope of superlatives across the abyss that divided experience from its representation by anecdote.”

ReasonFacesEmotionShadowIntelligentMereTalesTemptationShockDividedRepresentationImitationAbyssRopeAnecdotesSuperlatives
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