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She Bent Her Finger And Then Straightened It. The Mystery Was In The Instant Before It Moved, The Dividing Moment Between Not Moving And Moving, When Her Intention Took Effect. It Was Like A Wave Breaking. If She Could Only Find Herself At The Crest, She Thought, She Might Find The Secret Of Herself, That Part Of Her That Was Really In Charge. She Brought Her Forefinger Closer To Her Face And Stared At It, Urging It To Move. It Remained Still Because She Was Pretending... . And When She Did Crook It Finally, The Action Seemed To Start In The Finger Itself, Not In Some Part Of Her Mind.

-Ian Mcewan

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She Bent Her Finger

Ian Mcewan

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She Bent Her Finger And Then Straightened It. The Mystery Was In The Instant Before It Moved, The Dividing Moment Between Not Moving And Moving, When Her Intention Took Effect. It Was Like A Wave Breaking. If She Could Only Find Herself At The Crest, She Thought, She Might Find The Secret Of Herself, That Part Of Her That Was Really In Charge. She Brought Her Forefinger Closer To Her Face And Stared At It, Urging It To Move. It Remained Still Because She Was Pretending... . And When She Did Crook It Finally, The Action Seemed To Start In The Finger Itself, Not In Some Part Of Her Mind.

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Cecilia Wondered, As She Sometimes Did When She Met A Man For The First Time, If This Was The One She Was Going To Marry, And Whether It Was This Particular Moment She Would Remember For The Rest Of Her Life - With Gratitude, Or Profound And Particular Regret.

But It Was Too Interesting, Too New, Too Flattering, Too Deeply Comforting To Resist, It Was A Liberation To Be In Love And Say So, And She Could Only Let Herself Go Deeper.

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Now, I'm An Atheist. I Really Don't Believe For A Moment That Our Moral Sense Comes From A God.

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Terrorist Groups

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I'm Going Mad, I Told Myself. Let Me Not Be Mad.

True Intelligence Requires Fabulous Imagination.

True Intelligence

Who You Get, And How It Works Out - There's So Much Luck Involved, As Well As The Million Branching Consequences Of Your Conscious Choice Of A Mate, That No One And No Amount Of Talking Can Untangle It If It Turns Out Unhappily.

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That Love Which Does Not Build A Foundation On Good Sense Is Doomed.

She Lay In The Dark And Knew Everything.

She Wanted To Leave, She Wanted To Lie Alone Face Down On Her Bed And Savor The Vile Piquancy Of The Moment, And Go Back Down The Lines Of Branching Consequences To The Point Before The Destruction Began. She Needed To Contemplate With Eyes Closed The Full Richness Of What She Had Lost, What She Had Given Away, And To Anticipate The New Regime.

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Nothing Was To Be Lost By Beginning At The Beginning.

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Anything Can Happen

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It Was Thought, Perception, Sensations That Interested Her, The Conscious Mind As A River Through Time, And How To Represent Its Onward Roll, As Well As All The Tributaries That Would Swell It, And The Obstacles That Would Divert It. If Only She Could Reproduce The Clear Light Of A Summer's Morning.

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Dying In Unfamiliar Surroundings Miles Away From Home, It Cannot Possibly Be Good. There Is A Great Sadness About That I Think.

Most Of Humanity Gets By Without Reading Novels Or Poetry, And No One Would Deny The Richness Of Their Thoughts.

These Memories Sustained Him, But Not So Easily. Too Often They Reminded Him Of Where He Was When He Last Summoned Them. They Lay On The Far Side Of A Great Divide In Time, As Significant As B.c. And A.d. Before Prison, Before The War, Before The Sight Of A Corpse Became A Banality.

Someone Once Asked Me "if Your Life Could Be Extended To 150 And You Could Start Another Career, Would You?" And I Said "no, Thanks, I Think I'll Stick At This."

It Is Not The First Duty Of The Novelist To Provide Blueprints For Insurrection, Or Uplifting Tales Of Successful Resistance For The Benefit Of The Opposition. The Naming Of What Is There Is What Is Important.

Was Everyone Else Really As Alive As She Was?...if The Answer Was Yes, Then The World, The Social World, Was Unbearably Complicated, With Two Billion Voices, And Everyone's Thoughts Striving In Equal Importance And Everyone's Claim On Life As Intense, And Everyone Thinking They Were Unique, When No One Was.

It Troubles Him To Consider The Powerful Currents And Fine-tuning That Alter Fate, The Close And Distant Influences, The Accidents Of Character And Circumstance.

The Primitive Thinking Of The Supernaturally Inclined Amounts To What His Psychiatric Colleagues Call A Problem, Or An Idea, Of Reference. An Excess Of The Subjective, The Ordering Of The World In Line With Your Needs, An Inability To Contemplate Your Own Unimportance. In Henry's View Such Reasoning Belongs On A Spectrum At Whose Far End, Rearing Like An Abandoned Temple, Lies Psychosis.

For The Professors In The Academy, For The Humanities Generally, Misery Is More Amenable To Analysis: Happiness Is A Harder Nut To Crack.

It's The Essence Of A Degenerating Mind Periodically, To Lose All Sense Of Continuous Self, And Therefore Any Regard For What Others Think Of Your Lack Of Continuity.

...the World She Ran Through Loved Her And Would Give Her What She Wanted And Would Let It Happen.

Scientists Do Stand On The Shoulders Of Giants, Just As Do Writers. Conversely, In The Arts We Do Make Discoveries. We Do Refine Our Tools. So I Am Arguing With, Or At Least Playing With, The Idea That Art Never Improves.

It Is Photography Itself That Creates The Illusion Of Innocence. Its Ironies Of Frozen Narrative Lend To Its Subjects An Apparent Unawareness That They Will Change Or Die. It Is The Future They Are Innocent Of. Fifty Years On We Look At Them With The Godly Knowledge Of How They Turne Dout After All - Who They Married, The Date Of Their Death - With No Thought For Who Will One Day Be Holding Photographs Of Us.

Imagining What It Is Like To Be Someone Other Than Yourself Is At The Core Of Our Humanity. It Is The Essence Of Compassion, And It Is The Beginning Of Morality.

All She Had Needed Was The Certainty Of His Love, And His Reassurance That There Was No Hurry When A Lifetime Lay Ahead Of Them.

Girls Can Wear Jeans And Cut Their Hair Short And Wear Shirts And Boots Because It's Okay To Be A Boy; For Girls It's Like Promotion. But For A Boy To Look Like A Girl Is Degrading, According To You, Because Secretly You Believe That Being A Girl Is Degrading.

My Needs Were Simple I Didn't Bother Much With Themes Or Felicitous Phrases And Skipped Fine Descriptions Of Weather, Landscapes And Interiors. I Wanted Characters I Could Believe In, And I Wanted To Be Made Curious About What Was To Happen To Them. Generally, I Preferred People To Be Falling In And Out Of Love, But I Didn't Mind So Much If They Tried Their Hand At Something Else. It Was Vulgar To Want It, But I Liked Someone To Say 'marry Me' By The End.

And Now She Was Back In The World, Not One She Could Make, But The One That Had Made Her, And She Felt Herself Shrinking Under The Early Evening Sky. She Was Weary Of Being Outdoors, But She Was Not Ready To Go In. Was That Really All There Was In Life, Indoors Or Out? Wasn't There Somewhere Else For People To Go?

She Returned His Gaze, Struck By The Sense Of Her Own Transformation, And Overwhelmed By The Beauty Which A Lifetime Havit Had Taught Her To Ignore.

I Find It Very Difficult To Talk About Unwritten Works. It's Never Useful To Start Putting Words Casually Around The Flimsiest Of Notions. I Finished Saturday Only In Late November And I'm Now In The Rather Pleasant Stage Of Traveling, Reading And Waiting.

Screenwriting Is An Opportunity To Fly First Class, Be Treated Like A Celebrity, Sit Around The Pool And Be Betrayed.

I Would Rather Be Physically Disabled Obviously Than Mentally. I Would Rather Be Paraplegic Than Nuts. And It Is A Terrifying Prospect And Actually The Longer We Live The More Likely It Is That That's How We Will Go And That's A Very Painful Thing To Contemplate.

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