Clive was losing sensation in his feet, and as he stamped them the rhythm gave him back the ten note falling figure, ritardando, a cor anglais, and rising softly against it, contrapuntally, cellos in mirror image. Her face in it. The end.

Ian Mcewan
About This Quote

The quote that says “Clive was losing sensation in his feet, and as he stamped them the rhythm gave him back the ten note falling figure, ritardando, a cor anglais, and rising softly against it, contrapuntally, cellos in mirror image. Her face in it. The end” refers to a sequence of events involving Clive Davis. What happened is that Davis was on a plane when he noticed his feet being numb.

He thought nothing of it until he got out of the plane and realized that his feet were numb. He tested them by stomping on the ground, but he could feel no sensation. To make matters worse, the plane was almost at the end of its flight.

To prevent him from getting even more disoriented, he had to use his hearing to help him get home since his vision was impaired by the lack of feeling in his feet. When he got off of the plane he had two options: either fall or rise. He chose to rise because if he fell down again, he would not be able to get up again since feeling would be gone altogether.

Some Similar Quotes
  1. Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. - Frank Zappa
  2. Music is. .. A higher revelation than all Wisdom & Philosophy - Ludwig Van Beethoven
  3. Philosophy is the highest music. - Plato
  4. Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul. - Plato
  5. The truth is, going against the internal stream of ignorance is way more rebellious than trying to start some sort of cultural revolution. - Noah Levine
More Quotes By Ian Mcewan
  1. When it's gone, you'll know what a gift love was. You'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.
  2. The anticipation and dread he felt at seeing her was also a kind of sensual pleasure, and surrounding it, like an embrace, was a general elation--it might hurt, it was horribly inconvenient, no good might come of it, but he had found out for himself...
  3. Finally he spoke the three simple words that no amount of bad art or bad faith can every quite cheapen. She repeated them, with exactly the same slight emphasis on the second word, as though she were the one to say them first. He had...
  4. The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.
  5. This is how the entire course of a life can be changed: by doing nothing.
Related Topics