Nutshell

by Ian McEwan

And foe-of-convenience, the United States, barely the hope of the world, guilty of torture, helpless before its sacred text conceived in an age of powdered wigs, a constitution as unchallengeable as the Koran. Its nervous population obese, fearful, tormented by inarticulate anger, contemptuous of governance, murdering sleep with every new handgun.

Uniting and levelling all humanity, the dull old facts of altered climate, vanishing forests, creatures and polar ice. Profitable and poisonous agriculture obliterating biological beauty. Oceans turning to weak acid.

Free speech no longer free, liberal democracy no longer the obvious port of destiny, robots stealing jobs, liberty in close combat with security, socialism in disgrace, capitalism corrupt, destructive and in disgrace, no alternatives in sight.

We’ve built a world too complicated and dangerous for our quarrelsome natures to manage.

We’re bloated with privileges and delights, as well as complaints, and the rest who are not will be soon.

my reasonable suspicion is that poverty is deprivation on all levels.

There are not many options for the evening that follows an afternoon of drinking. Only two in fact: remorse, or more drinking and then remorse.

We believed we stood on a summit no one else, not in life, not in all poetry, had ever climbed. Our love was so fine and grand, it seemed to us a universal principle.

Revenge unstitches a civilisation. It’s a reversion to constant, visceral fear.

I’ll feel, therefore I’ll be.