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Scientists do stand on the shoulders of giants, just as do writers. Conversely, in the arts we do make discoveries. We do refine our tools. So I am arguing with, or at least playing with, the idea that art never improves.

Ian Mcewan

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Ian Mcewan
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: June 21
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
Playing
Scientists
Stand
Arguing
Least
Arts
Idea
Shoulders
Refine
Art
Scientist
Conversely
Ideas
Discovery
Improves
Make
Tools
Discoveries
Never
Writers
Giants

More quotes by Ian Mcewan

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Shall there be womanly times? Or shall we die?
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Could it ever be explained, how matter becomes conscious?
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A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.
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The anticipation and dread he felt at seeing her was also a kind of sensual pleasure, and surrounding it, like an embrace, was a general elation--it might hurt, it was horribly inconvenient, no good might come of it, but he had found out for himself what it was to be in love, and it thrilled him.
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One important theme is the extent to which one can ever correct an error, especially outside any frame of religious forgiveness. All of us have done something we regret - how we manage to remove that from our conscience, or whether that's even possible, interested me.
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Dying in unfamiliar surroundings miles away from home, it cannot possibly be good. There is a great sadness about that I think.
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At the risk of sounding like Virginia Woolf, I could live on £700 a year.
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You can spin stories out of the ways people understand and misunderstand each other.
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It is quite impossible these days to assume anything about people's educational level from the way they talk or dress or from their taste in music. Safest to treat everyone you meet as a distinguished intellectual.
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What reader wants to be told what attitude to strike?
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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.
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Most of humanity gets by without reading novels or poetry, and no one would deny the richness of their thoughts.
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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.
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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.
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He had never before felt so self-consciously young, nor experienced such appetite, such impatience for the story to begin.
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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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It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.
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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 what really happened? The answer is simple: the lovers survive and flourish.
Ian Mcewan