Quote

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.

Ian Mcewan

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Ian Mcewan
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: June 21
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
Real
Wickedness
Made
Grasp
Life
Confusion
People
Unhappy
Failure
Wasn
Simple
Scheming
Truth
Misunderstanding

More quotes by Ian Mcewan

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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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She loved him, though not at this particular moment.
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In that shrinking moment he discovered that he had never hated anyone until now. It was a feeling as pure as love, but dispassionate and icily rational.
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That love which does not build a foundation on good sense is doomed.
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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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I've yet to meet somebody who said, 'Your stories are so revolting I couldn't read them.'
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Dearest Cecilia, You’d be forgiven for thinking me mad, the way I acted this afternoon. The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence, Cee, and I don’t think I can blame the heat.
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...beauty, she had discovered occupied a narrow band. Ugliness, on the hand, had infinite variation.
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A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.
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i'm going mad, i told myself. let me not be mad.
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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.
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Could it ever be explained, how matter becomes conscious?
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She would simply wait on the bridge, calm and obstinate, until events, real events, not her own fantasies, roe to her challenge, and dispelled her insignificance.
Ian Mcewan
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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
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Not being boring is quite a challenge.
Ian Mcewan
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No emergency was ever dealt with effectively by democratic process.
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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Especially difficult when the first and best unconscious move of a dedicated liar is to persuade himself he's sincere. And once he's sincere, all deception vanishes.
Ian Mcewan
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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.
Ian Mcewan
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What was it with men, that they found elementary logic so difficult?
Ian Mcewan