Quote

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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Ian Mcewan
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: June 21
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
First
Sincere
Unconscious
Especially
Vanishes
Move
Persuade
Moving
Liar
Difficult
Deception
Best
Liars
Firsts
Dedicated

More quotes by Ian Mcewan

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None of us really either know the circumstances of our death or are likely to exert as much control over it as we would like to, but we can certainly have a little more say in it if we are terminally ill than we have at the moment. That's the element of dignity, but sure, life is very hard to organise even when you are fit and healthy.
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The end of secrecy would be the end of the novel - especially the English novel. The English novel requires social secrecy, personal secrecy.
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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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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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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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I did not kill my father, but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way. And but for the fact that it coincided with a landmark in my own physical growth, his death seemed insignificant compared to what followed.
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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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It's the essence of a degenerating mind periodically, to lose all sense of continuous self, and therefore any regard for what others think of your lack of continuity.
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Most of humanity gets by without reading novels or poetry, and no one would deny the richness of their thoughts.
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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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A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.
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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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Could it ever be explained, how matter becomes conscious?
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Rebecca Goldstein is a rare find among contemporary novelists: she has intellectual muscle as well as a tender emotional reach.
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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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He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit.
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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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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.
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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.
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The luxury of being half-asleep, exploring the fringes of psychosis in safety.
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