Quote

Could it ever be explained, how matter becomes conscious?

Ian Mcewan

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ian Mcewan
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: June 21
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
Explained
Conscious
Becomes
Ever
Matter

More quotes by Ian Mcewan

Image
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
Image
Dearest Cecilia, You’d be forgiven for thinking me mad, the way I acted this afternoon. The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence, Cee, and I don’t think I can blame the heat.
Ian Mcewan
Image
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.
Ian Mcewan
Image
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.
Ian Mcewan
Image
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
Image
It's good to get your hands dirty a bit and to test how you see things at a given point. And it's very pleasing after writing something like 'Atonement' or 'On Chesil Beach,' which are historical, to get involved in some plausible re-enactment of the here and now.
Ian Mcewan
Image
You can tell a lot from a person's nails. When a life starts to unravel, they're among the first to go.
Ian Mcewan
Image
Novelists have to be adept at controlling the flow of information, and, most crucially, they have to be in charge of the narrative.
Ian Mcewan
Image
We know so little about each other. We lie mostly submerged, like ice floes, with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white.
Ian Mcewan
Image
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
Image
The best way to tell people about climate change is through non-fiction. There's a vast literature of outstanding writing on the subject.
Ian Mcewan
Image
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
Image
Not being boring is quite a challenge.
Ian Mcewan
Image
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.
Ian Mcewan
Image
No emergency was ever dealt with effectively by democratic process.
Ian Mcewan
Image
I read in announcements of deaths 'peacefully in his sleep' and I wonder how many of those are true. Maybe they are just conventional. I hope they are true whenever I read it of someone. [But] I would rather be awake. Peacefully awake, brim full of some calming drug that was seeing me out of the door, having said my farewells.
Ian Mcewan
Image
One important theme is the extent to which one can ever correct an error, especially outside any frame of religious forgiveness. All of us have done something we regret - how we manage to remove that from our conscience, or whether that's even possible, interested me.
Ian Mcewan
Image
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.
Ian Mcewan
Image
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.
Ian Mcewan
Image
The luxury of being half-asleep, exploring the fringes of psychosis in safety.
Ian Mcewan