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The evasions of her little novel were exactly those of her life. Everything she did not wish to confront was also missing from her novella--and was necessary to it.

Ian Mcewan

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Ian Mcewan
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: June 21
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
Wish
Evasions
Also
Novella
Littles
Evasion
Little
Confront
Everything
Exactly
Life
Necessary
Missing
Novel

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Writing a novel resembles a journey with only the sketchiest of maps.
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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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At the risk of sounding like Virginia Woolf, I could live on £700 a year.
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Narrative tension is primarily about withholding information.
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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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Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.
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The best way to tell people about climate change is through non-fiction. There's a vast literature of outstanding writing on the subject.
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Let his name be cleared and everyone else adjust their thinking. He had put in time, now they must do the work. His business was simple. Find Cecilia and love her, marry her and live without shame.
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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.
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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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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.
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i'm going mad, i told myself. let me not be mad.
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You can spin stories out of the ways people understand and misunderstand each other.
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That love which does not build a foundation on good sense is doomed.
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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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The moment you lose curiosity in the world, you might as well be dead.
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No one knew about the squirrel’s skull beneath Briony bed, but no one wanted to know.
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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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If I could write the perfect novella I would die happy.
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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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