Molly Ferguson

“It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“Was everyone else really as alive as she was?... If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone’s thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone’s claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“Ah, good conversation — there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the time.”
― Iris Murdoch