Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

• If you'd had your way then, there wouldn't be much chance for second thoughts now.
• No justice system can ever be free of human error.
• There wasn't really much else to do. Make something, and die.
• Without a surrounding context of harmony, disharmony was meaningless and uninteresting.
• He was infinitely diluted; he was simply the sum of all the people who had listened to him, and when he was alone, he was nothing at all.
• Perhaps every century there was an exception or two to be made.
• Sometimes the work was hard, and you had to do whatever experience had taught you was most effective.
• If it's okay to be a transvestite, then it's okay for a racist to be one. What's not okay is to be a racist.
• The best ideas were the ones that survived and were strengthened by intelligent opposition.
• Love was a greater force than spite.
• 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.

12/22/2010