I’ll wait for you. Come back. The words were not meaningless, but they didn’t touch him now. It was clear enough - one person waiting for another was like an arithmetical sum, and just as empty of emotion. Waiting. Simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached. Waiting was a heavy word.
Interpretation
The act of waiting for someone can feel emotionally vacant despite the intentions behind it.
In this quote, Ian McEwan reflects on the emotional weight of waiting for someone and how, despite the deep meaning behind such an action, it can become an empty gesture when the emotional connection fades. The metaphor of waiting being like an arithmetical sum highlights the starkness and simplicity of the act, contrasting with the complex emotions one might typically associate with longing and anticipation.
In practice
During a wedding speech, one might say, 'In relationships, we often have to wait for one another, but remember that waiting can sometimes feel empty.'
Watching him during the first several minutes of his delivery, Cecilia felt a pleasant sinking sensation in her stomach as she contemplated how deliciously self-destructive it would be, almost erotic, to be married to a man so nearly handsome, so hugely rich, so unfathomably stupid. He would fill her with his big-faced children, all of them loud, boneheaded boys with a passion for guns and football and aeroplanes.
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.
It marked the beginning and, of course, an end. At that moment a chapter, no, a whole stage of my closed. Had I known, and had there been a spare second or two, I might have allowed myself a little nostalgia.
There are ways in which art can have a longer reach than politics.
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?
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 people have a natural desire to be needed, to have their importance to others tangibly confirmed.
My wife was the first romantic partner who understood both American and native parts of me - not so much the positive stuff, but the damage.
To be humble to superiors is a duty, to equals courtesy, to inferiors nobleness.
Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship.
I’m not used to girls, or familiar with their customs. I feel awkward around them, I don’t know what to say. I know the unspoken rules of boys, but with girls I sense that I am always on the verge of some unforeseen, calamitous blunder.
I'm not an analyzer. I've got a son that analyzes everything and everybody. But I don't analyze people.
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