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Arguing with a dead man in a lavatory is a claustrophobic experience.

Ian Mcewan

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Ian Mcewan
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: June 21
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
Experience
Men
Lavatory
Claustrophobic
Arguing
Dead

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That love which does not build a foundation on good sense is doomed.
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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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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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I think the novel, its business is the investigation of human nature.
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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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Briony began to understand the chasm that lay between an idea and its execution.
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It was not generally realized that what children mostly wanted was to be left alone.
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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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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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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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You can spin stories out of the ways people understand and misunderstand each other.
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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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Most of humanity gets by without reading novels or poetry, and no one would deny the richness of their thoughts.
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But what really happened? The answer is simple: the lovers survive and flourish.
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Shall there be womanly times? Or shall we die?
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A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.
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I'm sorry to say that far worse things have happened and the literature of the Holocaust is a witness to the capacity of the novel as a form.
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...beauty, she had discovered occupied a narrow band. Ugliness, on the hand, had infinite variation.
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I would rather be physically disabled obviously than mentally. I would rather be paraplegic than nuts. And it is a terrifying prospect and actually the longer we live the more likely it is that that's how we will go and that's a very painful thing to contemplate.
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I often don't read reviews.
Ian Mcewan