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It was not generally realized that what children mostly wanted was to be left alone.

Ian Mcewan

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Ian Mcewan
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: June 21
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
Realized
Alone
Left
Wanted
Children
Mostly
Generally

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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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When people have supernatural beliefs I think they should be respected but there is no reason why they need to impose them on others.
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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.
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No emergency was ever dealt with effectively by democratic process.
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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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...the world she ran through loved her and would give her what she wanted and would let it happen.
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At the back of my mind I had a sense of us sitting about waiting for some terrible event, and then I would remember that it had already happened.
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You can spin stories out of the ways people understand and misunderstand each other.
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Daylight seemed then to be the physical manifestation of common sense.
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She wanted to leave, she wanted to lie alone face down on her bed and savor the vile piquancy of the moment, and go back down the lines of branching consequences to the point before the destruction began. She needed to contemplate with eyes closed the full richness of what she had lost, what she had given away, and to anticipate the new regime.
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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.
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Someone once asked me If your life could be extended to 150 and you could start another career, would you? And I said No, thanks, I think I'll stick at this.
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I'm quite good at not writing.
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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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Narrative tension is primarily about withholding information.
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Writing a novel resembles a journey with only the sketchiest of maps.
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He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit.
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A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.
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If I could write the perfect novella I would die happy.
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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.
Ian Mcewan