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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
Crucially
Adept
Controlling
Charge
Novelists
Narrative
Flow
Information

More quotes by Ian Mcewan

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London in the '70s was a pretty catastrophic dump, I can tell you. We had every kind of industrial trouble we had severe energy problems we were under constant terrorist attack from Irish terrorist groups who had started a bombing campaign in English cities politics were fantastically polarized between left and right.
Ian Mcewan
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I actually find novels that are determined to be funny at every turn quite oppressive.
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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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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And feeling clever, I've always thought, is just a sigh away from being cheerful.
Ian Mcewan
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When people have supernatural beliefs I think they should be respected but there is no reason why they need to impose them on others.
Ian Mcewan
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But to do its noticing and judging, poetry balances itself on the pinprick of the moment. Slowing down, stopping yourself completely, to read and understand a poem is like trying to acquire an old-fashioned skill.
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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Looking after children is one of the ways of looking after yourself.
Ian Mcewan
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Nothing that can be, can come between me and the full prospect of my hopes.
Ian Mcewan
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It's good to get your hands dirty a bit and to test how you see things at a given point. And it's very pleasing after writing something like 'Atonement' or 'On Chesil Beach,' which are historical, to get involved in some plausible re-enactment of the here and now.
Ian Mcewan
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The trouble with being a daydreamer who doesn’t say much is that the teachers at school, especially those who don’t know you very well, are likely to think you’re rather stupid. Or, if not stupid, then dull. No one can see the amazing things that are going on in your head.
Ian Mcewan
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At the risk of sounding like Virginia Woolf, I could live on £700 a year.
Ian Mcewan
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Could it ever be explained, how matter becomes conscious?
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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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.
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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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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He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit.
Ian Mcewan
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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