Quote

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.

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
Form
Holocaust
Things
Witness
Sorry
Worse
Capacity
Novel
Happened
Literature

More quotes by Ian Mcewan

Image
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
Image
Not being boring is quite a challenge.
Ian Mcewan
Image
The luxury of being half-asleep, exploring the fringes of psychosis in safety.
Ian Mcewan
Image
A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.
Ian Mcewan
Image
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
Image
She loved him, though not at this particular moment.
Ian Mcewan
Image
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.
Ian Mcewan
Image
If I could write the perfect novella I would die happy.
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
It marked the beginning and, of course, an end. At that moment a chapter, no, a whole stage of my closed. Had I known, and had there been a spare second or two, I might have allowed myself a little nostalgia.
Ian Mcewan
Image
I actually find novels that are determined to be funny at every turn quite oppressive.
Ian Mcewan
Image
The end of secrecy would be the end of the novel - especially the English novel. The English novel requires social secrecy, personal secrecy.
Ian Mcewan
Image
The moment you lose curiosity in the world, you might as well be dead.
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
I'm quite good at not writing.
Ian Mcewan
Image
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
Image
The world should take note: not everything is getting worse.
Ian Mcewan
Image
Writing a novel resembles a journey with only the sketchiest of maps.
Ian Mcewan
Image
Let the guilty bury the innocent, and let no one change the evidence
Ian Mcewan
Image
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.
Ian Mcewan