What We Can Know

by Ian McEwan

Warmer water expands, adding to the rise.

O thought cold water expanded. Otherwise ice cubes wouldn’t float.

reflected as she had before, that poetry, not the novel, was literature’s indispensable form.

I’d like to shout down through a hole in the ceiling of time and advise the people of a hundred years ago: if you want your secrets kept, whisper them into the ear of your dearest, most trusted friend. Do not trust the keyboard and screen.

Not sure about that.

but a personal project to recreate in maple and spruce the famous ‘Vieuxtemps Guarneri’ violin of 1741.

Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

RLS book.

‘Time for some free verse. Or call it by its real name, prose with line breaks.’

On the suggestion of my wife and my old tutor’s stabbing finger, I became the biographer of the reputation of an unread poem.

A novelist, however important, had no business flaunting herself in the clothes of a great poet.

Rose had told me he was exceptionally bright for a humanities student.

Whose children, nieces, nephews and grandchildren were not geniuses?

SAS novels.

What are these?

‘Chris, I beg you. In this household, never say “hopefully”.’

‘Hopefully,’ Francis explained. ‘It’s not a word. You’re murdering the language. Don’t say it.’

It’s a sentence adverb, Mr Blundy, it refers to the speaker’s attitude, my attitude and—’