Machines Like Me

by Ian McEwan

There’s a special sensuousness in an unshared bed, at least for a period, until sleeping alone begins to assume its own quiet sadness.

It’s a matter of time, Charlie. General relativity was once at the outer edge of difficulty. Now it’s routine for first-year undergraduates. The same was true of the calculus. Now fourteen-year-olds can do it. One day quantum mechanics will pass into common sense.”