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It is not the first duty of the novelist to provide blueprints for insurrection, or uplifting tales of successful resistance for the benefit of the opposition. The naming of what is there is what is important.
Ian Mcewan
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Ian Mcewan
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: June 21
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
Benefits
Novelist
Duty
Uplifting
Successful
Novelists
Firsts
Opposition
First
Benefit
Important
Tales
Insurrection
Resistance
Naming
Provide
Blueprints
More quotes by Ian Mcewan
I do have a very strong sense that most of the terrible things in life happen suddenly and unpredictably, and certainly can sweep you off in different directions, and that is always of interest to a novelist.
Ian Mcewan
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
If I could write the perfect novella I would die happy.
Ian Mcewan
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
A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.
Ian Mcewan
Briony began to understand the chasm that lay between an idea and its execution.
Ian Mcewan
What was it with men, that they found elementary logic so difficult?
Ian Mcewan
I actually find novels that are determined to be funny at every turn quite oppressive.
Ian Mcewan
Shall there be womanly times? Or shall we die?
Ian Mcewan
I'm holding back, delaying the information. I'm lingering in the prior moment because it was a time when other outcomes were still possible.
Ian Mcewan
I couldn't think about novels at all. It seemed the only writing that was appropriate to that horrendous event was journalism, reportage. And, in fact, I think the profession rose quite honorably to the task. Novelists require a slower turnover, I mean, in time.
Ian Mcewan
Arguing with a dead man in a lavatory is a claustrophobic experience.
Ian Mcewan
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
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.
Ian Mcewan
I like to think that each book I start is a completely new departure But I’ve learned that whatever you do, readers will have no difficulty assimilating it into what you’ve done before.
Ian Mcewan
Daylight seemed then to be the physical manifestation of common sense.
Ian Mcewan
I've yet to meet somebody who said, 'Your stories are so revolting I couldn't read them.'
Ian Mcewan
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
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
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
