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Narrative tension is primarily about withholding information.

Ian Mcewan

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Ian Mcewan
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: June 21
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
Withholding
Primarily
Tension
Narrative
Information

More quotes by Ian Mcewan

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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.
Ian Mcewan
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A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.
Ian Mcewan
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Shall there be womanly times? Or shall we die?
Ian Mcewan
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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.
Ian Mcewan
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Could it ever be explained, how matter becomes conscious?
Ian Mcewan
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Not being boring is quite a challenge.
Ian Mcewan
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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.
Ian Mcewan
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When they kissed she immediately felt his tongue, tensed and strong, pushing past her teeth, like some bully shouldering his way into a room. Entering her.
Ian Mcewan
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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.
Ian Mcewan
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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.
Ian Mcewan
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But it was too interesting, too new, too flattering, too deeply comforting to resist, it was a liberation to be in love and say so, and she could only let herself go deeper.
Ian Mcewan
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These were everyday sounds magnified by darkness. And darkness was nothing - it was not a substance, it was not a presence, it was no more than an absence of light.
Ian Mcewan
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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.
Ian Mcewan
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At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.
Ian Mcewan
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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.
Ian Mcewan
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Writing a novel resembles a journey with only the sketchiest of maps.
Ian Mcewan
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I apologize for being obvious, but every time I watch the curtain come down on even a halfway decent production of a Shakespeare play I feel a little sorrowful that I'll never know the man, or any man of such warm intelligence.
Ian Mcewan
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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.
Ian Mcewan
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I often don't read reviews.
Ian Mcewan
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All this happiness on display is suspect... If they think - and they could be right - that continued torture and summary executions, ethnic cleansing and occasional genocide are preferable to an invasion, they should be sombre in their view.
Ian Mcewan