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Novelists have to be adept at controlling the flow of information, and, most crucially, they have to be in charge of the narrative.

Ian Mcewan

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Ian Mcewan
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: June 21
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
Information
Crucially
Adept
Controlling
Charge
Novelists
Narrative
Flow

More quotes by 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.
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The luxury of being half-asleep, exploring the fringes of psychosis in safety.
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I've yet to meet somebody who said, 'Your stories are so revolting I couldn't read them.'
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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.
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But it was too interesting, too new, too flattering, too deeply comforting to resist, it was a liberation to be in love and say so, and she could only let herself go deeper.
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You can tell a lot from a person's nails. When a life starts to unravel, they're among the first to go.
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He never believed in fate or providence, or the future being made by someone in the sky. Instead, at every instant, a trillion trillion possible futures the pickiness of pure chance and physical laws seemed like freedom from the scheming of a gloomy god.
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The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.
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None of us really either know the circumstances of our death or are likely to exert as much control over it as we would like to, but we can certainly have a little more say in it if we are terminally ill than we have at the moment. That's the element of dignity, but sure, life is very hard to organise even when you are fit and healthy.
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It's the essence of a degenerating mind periodically, to lose all sense of continuous self, and therefore any regard for what others think of your lack of continuity.
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I actually find novels that are determined to be funny at every turn quite oppressive.
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Narrative tension is primarily about withholding information.
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Find you, love you, marry you, and live without shame.
Ian Mcewan
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I'm quite good at not writing.
Ian Mcewan
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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
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I was the basest of readers. All I wanted was my own world, and myself in it, given back to me in artful shapes and accessible form.
Ian Mcewan
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Writing a novel resembles a journey with only the sketchiest of maps.
Ian Mcewan
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It was not generally realized that what children mostly wanted was to be left alone.
Ian Mcewan
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Daylight seemed then to be the physical manifestation of common sense.
Ian Mcewan
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i'm going mad, i told myself. let me not be mad.
Ian Mcewan