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If I could write the perfect novella I would die happy.

Ian Mcewan

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Ian Mcewan
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: June 21
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
Write
Writing
Would
Novella
Dies
Happy
Perfect

More quotes by Ian Mcewan

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Cecilia wondered, as she sometimes did when she met a man for the first time, if this was the one she was going to marry, and whether it was this particular moment she would remember for the rest of her life - with gratitude, or profound and particular regret.
Ian Mcewan
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She returned his gaze, struck by the sense of her own transformation, and overwhelmed by the beauty which a lifetime havit had taught her to ignore.
Ian Mcewan
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Looking after children is one of the ways of looking after yourself.
Ian Mcewan
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From this new and intimate perspective, she learned a simple, obvious thing she had always known, and everyone knew that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended.
Ian Mcewan
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He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit.
Ian Mcewan
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No one knew about the squirrel’s skull beneath Briony bed, but no one wanted to know.
Ian Mcewan
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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
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I did not kill my father, but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way. And but for the fact that it coincided with a landmark in my own physical growth, his death seemed insignificant compared to what followed.
Ian Mcewan
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If life was a dream, then dying must be the moment when you woke up. It was so simple it must be true. You died, the dream was over, you woke up. That's what people meant when they talked about going to heaven. It was like waking up.
Ian Mcewan
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Let his name be cleared and everyone else adjust their thinking. He had put in time, now they must do the work. His business was simple. Find Cecilia and love her, marry her and live without shame.
Ian Mcewan
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She had lolled about for three years at Girton with the kind of books she could equally have read at home--Jane Austen, Dickens, Conrad, all in the library downstairs, in complete sets. How had that pursuit, reading the novels that others took as their leisure, let her think she was superior to anyone else?
Ian Mcewan
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All this happiness on display is suspect... If they think - and they could be right - that continued torture and summary executions, ethnic cleansing and occasional genocide are preferable to an invasion, they should be sombre in their view.
Ian Mcewan
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The best way to tell people about climate change is through non-fiction. There's a vast literature of outstanding writing on the subject.
Ian Mcewan
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But what really happened? The answer is simple: the lovers survive and flourish.
Ian Mcewan
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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
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Could it ever be explained, how matter becomes conscious?
Ian Mcewan
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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
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This is the pain-pleasure of having newly adult children they're innocent and ruthless in forgetting their sweet old dependence.
Ian Mcewan
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We know so little about each other. We lie mostly submerged, like ice floes, with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white.
Ian Mcewan
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And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.
Ian Mcewan