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 More Quotes by Ian Mcewan More Quotes From Ian Mcewan How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime. Ian Mcewan rosary guilt self I think the novel, its business is the investigation of human nature. Ian Mcewan investigation human-nature thinking Twenty years ago I might have hired a professional listener, but somewhere along the way I had lost faith in the talking cure. A genteel fraud in my view. Ian Mcewan views talking years 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. Ian Mcewan bully strong past Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it's okay to be a boy; for girls it's like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading. Ian Mcewan cutting girl believe 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 climate writing people I don't really believe in evil at all. Ian Mcewan evil believe Was everyone else really as alive as she was?...If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone's thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone's claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. Ian Mcewan unique life thinking 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 balance skills judging I often don't read reviews. Ian Mcewan reviews There did not have to be a moral. She need only show separate minds, as alive as her own, struggling with the idea that other minds were equally alive. It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding, above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show how they had an equal value. That was the only moral a story need have. Ian Mcewan real simple struggle What is it precisely, that feeling of 'returning' from a poem? Something is lighter, softer, larger - then it fades, but never completely. Ian Mcewan lighters fades feelings 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 errors regret religious 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 childhood twenties years 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 discovery ideas art Not everything people did could be in a correct, logical order, especially when they were alone. Ian Mcewan logical order people One has to have the courage of one's pessimism. Ian Mcewan pessimism Perhaps the greatest reading pleasure has an element of self-annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist. Ian Mcewan elements reading self She had lolled about for three years at Girton with the kind of books she could equally have read at home--Jane Austen, Dickens, Conrad, all in the library downstairs, in complete sets. How had that pursuit, reading the novels that others took as their leisure, let her think she was superior to anyone else? Ian Mcewan reading home book 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 important uplifting successful
