Quote

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.

Ian Mcewan

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Ian Mcewan
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: June 21
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
Father
Compared
Death
Helped
Felt
Seemed
Facts
Garden
Coincided
Sometimes
Physical
Landmark
Way
Kill
Landmarks
Growth
Insignificant
Fact
Followed

More quotes by Ian Mcewan

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In that shrinking moment he discovered that he had never hated anyone until now. It was a feeling as pure as love, but dispassionate and icily rational.
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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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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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He had never before felt so self-consciously young, nor experienced such appetite, such impatience for the story to begin.
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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Looking after children is one of the ways of looking after yourself.
Ian Mcewan
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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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Not being boring is quite a challenge.
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I often don't read reviews.
Ian Mcewan
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I'm holding back, delaying the information. I'm lingering in the prior moment because it was a time when other outcomes were still possible.
Ian Mcewan
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If life was a dream, then dying must be the moment when you woke up. It was so simple it must be true. You died, the dream was over, you woke up. That's what people meant when they talked about going to heaven. It was like waking up.
Ian Mcewan
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What was it with men, that they found elementary logic so difficult?
Ian Mcewan
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Narrative tension is primarily about withholding information.
Ian Mcewan
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I think the novel, its business is the investigation of human nature.
Ian Mcewan
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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.
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.
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Above all, she wanted to look as though she had not given the matter a moment's thought, and that would take time.
Ian Mcewan
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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.
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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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