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These were everyday sounds magnified by darkness. And darkness was nothing - it was not a substance, it was not a presence, it was no more than an absence of light.

Ian Mcewan

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Ian Mcewan
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: June 21
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
Nothing
Substance
Sounds
Absence
Presence
Everyday
Darkness
Sound
Light
Magnified

More quotes by Ian Mcewan

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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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She had lolled about for three years at Girton with the kind of books she could equally have read at home--Jane Austen, Dickens, Conrad, all in the library downstairs, in complete sets. How had that pursuit, reading the novels that others took as their leisure, let her think she was superior to anyone else?
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i'm going mad, i told myself. let me not be mad.
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If life was a dream, then dying must be the moment when you woke up. It was so simple it must be true. You died, the dream was over, you woke up. That's what people meant when they talked about going to heaven. It was like waking up.
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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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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.
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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.
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I believe the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction.
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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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He had never before felt so self-consciously young, nor experienced such appetite, such impatience for the story to begin.
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Now, I'm an atheist. I really don't believe for a moment that our moral sense comes from a god.
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You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan.
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All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them.
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Above all, she wanted to look as though she had not given the matter a moment's thought, and that would take time.
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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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The luxury of being half-asleep, exploring the fringes of psychosis in safety.
Ian Mcewan
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Find you, love you, marry you, and live without shame.
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I wouldn't mind being the lead guitarist in an incredibly successful rock band. However, I don't play the guitar.
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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.
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Looking after children is one of the ways of looking after yourself.
Ian Mcewan