Ian Mcewan Quotes

I want to live in a place where strangers rush to help someone in distress.
Ian Mcewan

Live, Help, Someone

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

Important, Done, Regret

A twenty-one-year-old writer is likely to be inhibited by a lack of usable experience. Childhood and adolescence were something I knew.
Ian Mcewan

Experience, Knew, Writer

As regards literary culture, it fascinates me that it has been so resilient to the Union. For example, when T.S. Eliot wanted to become poet in these lands, it wasn't as an English poet, it was an Anglian poet he wanted to be.
Ian Mcewan

Become, Wanted, Union

At the risk of sounding like Virginia Woolf, I could live on £700 a year.
Ian Mcewan

Live, Year, Risk

Atheists have as much conscience, possibly more, than people with deep religious conviction, and they still have the same problem of how they reconcile themselves to a bad deed in the past. It's a little easier if you've got a god to forgive you.
Ian Mcewan

By concentrating on what is good in people, by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice, and by asking them to put their faith in the future, socialists put themselves at a severe disadvantage.
Ian Mcewan

Faith, Good, Future

How often one reads a contemporary full-length novel and thinks quietly, mutinously, that it would have worked out better at half or a third the length.
Ian Mcewan

Often, Half, Worked

I actually find novels that are determined to be funny at every turn quite oppressive.
Ian Mcewan

Funny, Find, Actually

I always used to deny this, but I guess what I'm really saying is that I was writing to shock... And I dug deep and dredged up all kinds of vile things which fascinated me at the time.
Ian Mcewan

Time, Deep, Saying

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

Time, Down, Play

I don't believe there's any inherent darkness at the center of religion at all. I think religion actually is a morally neutral force.
Ian Mcewan

Religion, Darkness, Actually

I don't hold grudges.
Ian Mcewan

I don't really believe in evil at all.
Ian Mcewan

I often don't read reviews.
Ian Mcewan

Often, Read, Reviews

I put it to you that there are no British poets, there are no British novelists. I have heard myself described as one, but I think really I'm an English novelist; there are Scottish poets and Scottish novelists.
Ian Mcewan

Put, English, Heard

I think of novels in architectural terms. You have to enter at the gate, and this gate must be constructed in such a way that the reader has immediate confidence in the strength of the building.
Ian Mcewan

Strength, Confidence, Building

I was an intimate sort of child who never spoke up in groups. I preferred close friends.
Ian Mcewan

Friends, Child, Close

I wouldn't mind being the lead guitarist in an incredibly successful rock band. However, I don't play the guitar.
Ian Mcewan

Rock, Successful, Mind

I'm quite good at not writing.
Ian Mcewan

Good, Writing, Quite

I've yet to meet somebody who said, 'Your stories are so revolting I couldn't read them.'
Ian Mcewan

Said, Read, Somebody

If I could write the perfect novella I would die happy.
Ian Mcewan

Happy, Die, Perfect

In my experience an appreciative letter from a fellow writer means a lot.
Ian Mcewan

Experience, Means, Writer

It is not the first duty of the novelist to provide blueprints for insurrection, or uplifting tales of successful resistance for the benefit of the opposition. The naming of what is there is what is important.
Ian Mcewan

Successful, Important, Duty

It should simply be an empirical matter whether the climate is changing or not and whether we're responsible. But the various sides of the debate have now become so tribal that it's no longer a matter of changing our views as more information comes in.
Ian Mcewan

Become, Matter, Whether

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Biography

Nationality: British

Type: Author

Born: June 21, 1948

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Cite this Page: Citation

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