Amsterdam Quotes

“He would work through the night and sleep until lunch. There wasn't really much else to do. Make something, and die.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“We knew so little about eachother. We lay mostly submerged, like ice floes with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white. Here was a rare sight below the waves, of a man's privacy and turmoil, of his dignity upended by the overpowering necessity of pure fantasy, pure thought, by the irreducible human element - Mind. ”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“In a language as idiomatically stressed as English, opportunities for misreadings are bound to arise. By a mere backward movement of stress, a verb can become a noun, an act a thing. To refuse, to insist on saying no to what you believe is wrong, becomes at a stroke refuse, an insurmountable pile of garbage.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“There wasn't really much else to do. Make something, and die.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“As far as the welfare of every other living form on earth was concerned, the human project was not just a failure, it was a mistake from the very beginning.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“We know so little about each other. We lie mostly submerged, like ice floes, with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“Was it boredom or sadism that made the shirt service people do up every single button?”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“and roads, new roads probing endlessly, shamelessly, as though all that mattered was to be elsewhere.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“Over a quarter of a century ago she and Vernon had made a household for almost a year, in a tiny rooftop flat on the rue de Seine. There were always damp towels on the floor then, and cataracts of her underwear tumbling from drawers she never closed, a big ironing board that was never folded away, and in the one overfilled wardrobe dresses , crushed and shouldering sideways like commuters on the metro. Magazines, makeup, bank statements, bead necklaces, flowers, knickers, ashtrays, invitations, tampons, LPs, airplane tickets, high heeled shoes- not a single surface was left uncovered by something of Molly's, so that when Vernon was meant to be working at home, he took to writing in a cafe along the street. And yet each morning she arose fresh from the shell of this girly squalor, like a Botticelli Venus, to present herself, not naked, of course, but sleekly groomed, at the offices of Paris Vogue.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“He knew from long experience that a letter sent in fury merely put a weapon into the hands of your enemy”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“Each day he made attempts … but produced nothing but quotations, thinly or well disguised, of his own work. Nothing sprang free of its own idiom, its own authority, to offer the element of surprise that would be the guarantee of originality.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“The following day the editor presided over a sudued meeting with his senior staff. Tony Montano sat to one side, a silent observer.
"It's time we ran more regular columns. They're cheap, and everyone else is doing them. You know, we hire someone of low to medium intelligence, possibly female, to write about, well, nothing much. You've seen that sort of thing. Goes to a party and can't remember anyone's name. Twelve hundred words."
"Sort of naval gazing," Jeremy Ball suggested.
"Not quite. Gazing is too intellectual. More like naval chat.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“Everyone nodded, nobody agreed.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“Thing is, we could discuss it out loud in front of the gentlemen over there, or you could get off my case and make a pleasant farewell. That is to say, fuck off.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“When she found a place of her own
and packed her bags he asked her to marry him. She kissed him, and quoted in his ear,
"He married a woman to stop her getting away, Now she’s there all day.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“In his corner of West London, and in his self-preoccupied daily round, it was easy for Clive to think of civilization as the sum of all the arts, along with design, cuisine, good wine, and the like. But now it appeared that this was what it really was- square miles of meager modern houses whose principal purpose was the support of TV aerials and dishes; factories producing worthless junk to be advertised on the televisions and, in dismal lots, lorries queuing to distribute it, and everywhere else, roads and the tyranny of traffic.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“Then, with an extended, falling glissando of disgust, the whole string section, plus flutes and piccolo, surged toward the brass, leaving the music critic and his deed - an early evening frites and mayonnaise on Oude Hoogstraat - illuminated under a lonely chandelier.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“He knew from long experience that a letter sent in fury merely put a weapon into the hands of your enemy. Poison, in preserved form, to be used against you long into the future.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“It can happen sometimes, with those who brood on an injustice, that a taste for revenge can usefully combine with a sense of obligation.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“Both men accepted that the nature of the request, its intimacy and self-conscious reflection on their friendship, had created, for the moment, an uncomfortable emotional proximity which was best dealt with by their parting without another word.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“The quiet gravity really wasn't his style at all, which had always been both needy and dour; anxious to be liked, but incapable of taking friendliness for granted. A burden of the hugely rich.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“This sense of absence had been growing since Molly’s funeral. It was wearing into him. Last night he had woken beside his sleeping wife and had to touch his own face to be assured he remained a physical entity.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“And perhaps that was typical of a certain . . . imbalance in their friendship that had always been there and which Clive had been aware of somewhere in his heart and had always pushed away, disliking himself for unworthy thoughts. Until now.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“In some respect Journalism is like science, the best ideas were one that survived and strengthened by opposition.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“...when Clive stood from the piano and shuffled to the doorway to turn out the studio lights, and looked back at the rich, the beautiful chaos that surrounded his toils, and had once more a passing thought, the minuscule fragment of a suspicion that he would not have shared with a single person in the world, would not even have committed to his journal and whose key word he shaped in his mind only with reluctance ; the thought was, quite simply, that it might not be going too far to say that he was... a genius. A genius. Though he sounded it guiltily on his inner ear, he would not let the word reach his lips.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“Once he had found his seat he removed his shoe and discovered a flattened black mass of chewing gum embedded deep in the zigzag tread of the sole. Upper lip arched in disgust, he was still picking, cutting, and scraping away with a pocket knife as the train began to move. Beneath the patina of grime, the gum was still slightly pink, like flesh, and the smell of peppermint was faint but distinct. How appalling, the intimate contact with the contents of a stranger’s mouth, the bottomless vulgarity of people who chewed gum and who let it fall from their lips where they stood.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“It would have been possible to back out of his engagements by assuming the license of the free artistic spirit, but he loathed such arrogance. He had a number of friends who played the genius card when it suited, failing to show up to this or that in the belief that whatever local upset it caused, it could only increase respect for the compelling nature of their high calling. These types — novelists were by far the worst — managed to convince friends and families that not only their working hours, but every nap and stroll, every fit of silence, depression of drunkenness bore the exculpatory ticket of high intent.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“Clive thought of his work in totality, of how varied and rich it seemed whenever he was able to raise his head and take the long perspective, how it represented in abstract a whole history of his lifetime. And still so much to do.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“...but hearing and seeing only the bright hurry-gurdy carousel os his twirling thoughts, and the same hard little horses bobbing by on their braided rods. Here they came again. The outrage! The police! Poor Molly! Sanctimonious bastard! Call that a moral position? Up to his neck in shit! The outrage! And what about Molly....?”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

“Wie wohlhabend, wie einflussreich sie waren, wie sie prosperiert hatten unter einer Regierung, die sie beinahe siebzehn Jahre lang verachtet hatten! Talking ‚bout my generation. Diese Tatkraft, dieser unverschämte Dusel! Im Sozialstaat der Nachkriegszeit genährt von Milch und Honig des Staates, danach verwöhnt vom zaghaft-unschuldigen Wohlstand ihrer Eltern, mündig dann in einer Zeit der Vollbeschäftigung mit neuen Universitäten und bunten Taschentüchern, dem augusteischen Zeitalter des Rock ‚n’ Roll, der erschwinglichen Ideale. Als die Leiter hinter ihnen bröckelte, als der Staat seine Zitzen verweigerte und zum Hausdrachen wurde, saßen sie schon im trockenen, konsolidierten sich und ließen sich häusliche nieder, um dieses oder jenes zu bilden – Geschmack, Meinungen, Vermögen.”
― Ian McEwan, Amsterdam