Ian Mcewan Quotes

We cannot see but a small depth into the heart of man, and can only discover the work of his tongue.

Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.

My face, my self, what would they mean to anybody? Just another stiff. So this self of mine passes some other's self on the street - what do we have to say to each other? Hey there! Hi ya!That's about it. Nobody raises a hand. No one turns around to take another look.

You know, people seldom go to the trouble of scratching the surface of things to find the inner truth.

People are not what they seem to be according to their looks.

Everyone has something to hide. And if they couldn't hide it the world would be in a lot worse mess than it is.

He made his life a lie so he might never have to know anyone.

When we successfully deceive others, they are not aware of it; the same is true with self-deception.

Anyone who has looked deeply into the world may guess how much wisdom lies in the superficiality of men. The instinct that preserves them teaches them to be flighty light, and false.

It strikes me how strange people are. You can see them every day - you can think you know them - and then you fшnd out you hardly know them at all.

We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,- - This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be otherwise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see thus, while We wear the mask. We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!

I'm not saying she was lying to me, but she just acted so different before I got to know her, and if she really isn't like what she was at the beginning, I wish she could have just said so.

It’s amazing what lies people can sustain behind the mask of their real faces.

On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.

Conversation is the wall we build between ourselves and other people, too often with tired words like used and broken bottles which, catching the sunlight as they lie embedded in the wall, are mistaken for jewels.

One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.

It is easier to deceive yourself, and to do so unperceived, than to deceive another.

We must put up with our clothes as they are - they have their reason for existing. They are on us to expose us - to advertise what we wear them to conceal. They are a sign; a sign of insincerity; a sign of suppressed vanity; a pretense that we desire gorgeous colors and the graces of harmony and form; and we put them on to propagate that lie and back it up.

[People] want me to finish things. But I see them in such a way and paint them accordingly. ... Nothing is simpler than to complete pictures in a superficial sense. Never does one lie so cleverly as then.

Honor's a thing too subtle for wisdom; if honor lie in eating, he's right honorable.

Like" and "like" and "like"--but what is the thing that lies beneath the semblance of the thing?

The lies most devastating to our self-esteem are not so much the lies we tell as the lies we live.

So this was how secrets got started, I thought to myself. People constructed them little by little.

She had the face of an angel I saw mirrors in her eyes We were the same, she and I Both bound by potent lies. In him I saw my future In him I saw my friend In him I saw my destiny Both my beginning and my end.