The Comfort of Strangers Quotes

“...they knew each other as much as they knew themselves, and their intimacy, rather like too many suitcases, was a matter of perpetual concern; together they moved slowly, clumsily, effecting lugubrious compromises, attending to delicate shifts of mood, repairing breaches. As individuals they didn't easily take offense; but together they managed to offend each other in surprising, unexpected ways; then the offender - it had happened twice since their arrival - became irritated by the cloying susceptibilities of the other, and they would continue to explore the twisting alleyways and sudden squares in silence, and with each step the city would recede as they locked tighter into each other's presence.”
― Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers

“She sleepwalked from moment to moment, and whole months slipped by without memory, without bearing the faintest imprint of her conscious will. ”
― Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers

“She loved him, though not at this particular moment.”
― Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers

“It is the world that shapes people’s minds. It is men who have shaped the world. So women’s minds are shaped by men. From earliest childhood, the world they see is made by men. Now the women lie to themselves and there is confusion and unhappiness everywhere.”
― Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers

“To step down there now as if completely free, to be released from the arduous states of play of psychological condition, to have leisure to be open and attentive to perception, to the world whose breathtaking, incessant cascade against the senses was so easily and habitually ignored, dinned out, in the interests of unexamined ideals of personal responsibility, efficiency, citizenship, to step down there now, just walk away, melt into the shadow, would be so very easy.”
― Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers

“Without a specific destination, the visitors chose routes as they might choose a colour, and even the precise manner in which they became lost expressed their cumulative choices, their will.”
― Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers

“What tended to happen, to Colin and Mary at least, was that subjects were not explored so much as defensively reiterated, or forced into elaborate irrelevancies, and suffused with irritability.”
― Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers

“The frontage was”
― Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers

“Without a specific destination, the visitors chose routes as they might choose a colour”
― Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers