Quote

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

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
Analysis
Generally
Amenable
Misery
Humanities
Harder
Crack
Humanity
Academy
Happiness
Professors
Cracks
Nuts

More quotes by Ian Mcewan

Image
i'm going mad, i told myself. let me not be mad.
Ian Mcewan
Image
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
Image
You can spin stories out of the ways people understand and misunderstand each other.
Ian Mcewan
Image
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.
Ian Mcewan
Image
The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.
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
I couldn't think about novels at all. It seemed the only writing that was appropriate to that horrendous event was journalism, reportage. And, in fact, I think the profession rose quite honorably to the task. Novelists require a slower turnover, I mean, in time.
Ian Mcewan
Image
No one knew about the squirrel’s skull beneath Briony bed, but no one wanted to know.
Ian Mcewan
Image
I actually find novels that are determined to be funny at every turn quite oppressive.
Ian Mcewan
Image
There's a taste in the air, sweet and vaguely antiseptic, that reminds him of his teenage years in these streets, and of a general state of longing, a hunger for life to begin that from this distance seems like happiness.
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
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
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
There are ways in which art can have a longer reach than politics.
Ian Mcewan
Image
Dying in unfamiliar surroundings miles away from home, it cannot possibly be good. There is a great sadness about that I think.
Ian Mcewan
Image
At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.
Ian Mcewan
Image
I'm quite good at not writing.
Ian Mcewan
Image
A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.
Ian Mcewan
Image
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
Image
Writing a novel resembles a journey with only the sketchiest of maps.
Ian Mcewan