Quote

The end of secrecy would be the end of the novel - especially the English novel. The English novel requires social secrecy, personal secrecy.

Ian Mcewan

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ian Mcewan
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: June 21
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
Social
Ends
Would
Secrecy
Requires
English
Especially
Novel
Personal

More quotes by Ian Mcewan

Image
...beauty, she had discovered occupied a narrow band. Ugliness, on the hand, had infinite variation.
Ian Mcewan
Image
Finally, you had to measure yourself by other people - there really was nothing else. every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone taught you something about yourself.
Ian Mcewan
Image
Narrative tension is primarily about withholding information.
Ian Mcewan
Image
He was looking at her with amused suspicion. There was something between them, and even she had to acknowledge that a tame remark about the weather sounded perverse.
Ian Mcewan
Image
There are ways in which art can have a longer reach than politics.
Ian Mcewan
Image
He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit.
Ian Mcewan
Image
I think the novel, its business is the investigation of human nature.
Ian Mcewan
Image
It was thought, perception, sensations that interested her, the conscious mind as a river through time, and how to represent its onward roll, as well as all the tributaries that would swell it, and the obstacles that would divert it. If only she could reproduce the clear light of a summer's morning.
Ian Mcewan
Image
There was, in my view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honour. No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on an authorial whim. The invented had to be as solid and as self-consistent as the actual. This was a contract founded on mutual trust.
Ian Mcewan
Image
When people ask, Is there any advice you'd give a young writer?, I say write short stories. They afford lots of failure. Pastiche is a great way to start.
Ian Mcewan
Image
I believe the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction.
Ian Mcewan
Image
I like to think that it isn't weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair.
Ian Mcewan
Image
...the world she ran through loved her and would give her what she wanted and would let it happen.
Ian Mcewan
Image
I would rather be physically disabled obviously than mentally. I would rather be paraplegic than nuts. And it is a terrifying prospect and actually the longer we live the more likely it is that that's how we will go and that's a very painful thing to contemplate.
Ian Mcewan
Image
The evasions of her little novel were exactly those of her life. Everything she did not wish to confront was also missing from her novella--and was necessary to it.
Ian Mcewan
Image
Could it ever be explained, how matter becomes conscious?
Ian Mcewan
Image
Looking after children is one of the ways of looking after yourself.
Ian Mcewan
Image
When they kissed she immediately felt his tongue, tensed and strong, pushing past her teeth, like some bully shouldering his way into a room. Entering her.
Ian Mcewan
Image
At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.
Ian Mcewan
Image
i'm going mad, i told myself. let me not be mad.
Ian Mcewan