Speak

Like a skater on thinning ice,
she accelerated to save herself from drowning.
She tore through her sentences,
as though speed alone would generate sense,
as though she could propel him too past contradictions,
swing him so fast along the curve of her intention
that there could be no objection he could grasp at.
-- Ian McEwan, "On Chesil Beach"

Love

For the first time,
her love for Edward
was associated with a definable
physical sensation, as irrefutable as vertigo.
Before, she had known only
a comforting broth of warm emotions,
a thick winter blanket of kindness and trust.

That had always seemed enough,
an achievement in itself.

Now here at last
were the beginnings of desire,
precise and alien, but clearly her own;
and beyond, as though suspended
above and behind her, just out of sight,
was relief that she was just like everyone else.
-- Ian McEwan, "On Chesil Beach"

Story

A story was a form of telepathy.
By means of inking symbols onto a page,
she was able to transfer 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.
Reading a sentence and understanding it
were the same thing ...
There was no gap
during which the symbols were unravelled.
-- Ian McEwan, "Atonement

Confront

The matter lay between them, as solid
as a geographical feature, a mountain,
a headland. Unnameable, unavoidable.
-- Ian McEwan, "On Chesil Beach"