More quotes by Ian McEwan, Atonement

"At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write."
"Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?"
"A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it."
"At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write."
"She had lolled about for three years at Girton with the kind of books she could equally have read at home--Jane Austen, Dickens, Conrad, all in the library downstairs, in complete sets. How had that pursuit, reading the novels that others took as their leisure, let her think she was superior to anyone else?"