Quote

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.

Ian Mcewan

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Ian Mcewan
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: June 21
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
Read
Skill
Moment
Poem
Understand
Acquire
Moments
Judging
Balances
Trying
Skills
Slowing
Like
Completely
Noticing
Balance
Fashioned
Poetry
Stopping

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Finally, you had to measure yourself by other people - there really was nothing else. every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone taught you something about yourself.
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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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I like to think that it isn't weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair.
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If I could write the perfect novella I would die happy.
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Cecilia wondered, as she sometimes did when she met a man for the first time, if this was the one she was going to marry, and whether it was this particular moment she would remember for the rest of her life - with gratitude, or profound and particular regret.
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For the professors in the academy, for the humanities generally, misery is more amenable to analysis: happiness is a harder nut to crack.
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It is not the first duty of the novelist to provide blueprints for insurrection, or uplifting tales of successful resistance for the benefit of the opposition. The naming of what is there is what is important.
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Find you, love you, marry you, and live without shame.
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Looking after children is one of the ways of looking after yourself.
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He was looking at her with amused suspicion. There was something between them, and even she had to acknowledge that a tame remark about the weather sounded perverse.
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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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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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When anything can happen, everything matters.
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Arguing with a dead man in a lavatory is a claustrophobic experience.
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He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit.
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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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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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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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These memories sustained him, but not so easily. Too often they reminded him of where he was when he last summoned them. They lay on the far side of a great divide in time, as significant as B.C. and A.D. Before prison, before the war, before the sight of a corpse became a banality.
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