There are ways in which art can have a longer reach than politics. Ian Mcewan More Quotes by Ian Mcewan More Quotes From Ian Mcewan 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 eyefaceslying In my experience an appreciative letter from a fellow writer means a lot. Ian Mcewan appreciativelettersmean Oh, I've become immune to the Booker. I think we need something a little more like the Pulitzer prize, where there isn't this great race. Ian Mcewan raceneedsthinking How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all. Ian Mcewan forgivingatheistimagination She lay in the dark and knew everything. Ian Mcewan laysdark In a language as idiomatically stressed as English, opportunities for misreadings are bound to arise. By a mere backward movement of stress, a verb can become a noun, an act a thing. To refuse, to insist on saying no to what you believe is wrong, becomes at a stroke refuse, an insurmountable pile of garbage. Ian Mcewan stressopportunitybelieve How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? Ian Mcewan atonementnovelistsoutcomes Watching him during the first several minutes of his delivery, Cecilia felt a pleasant sinking sensation in her stomach as she contemplated how deliciously self-destructive it would be, almost erotic, to be married to a man so nearly handsome, so hugely rich, so unfathomably stupid. He would fill her with his big-faced children, all of them loud, boneheaded boys with a passion for guns and football and aeroplanes. Ian Mcewan stupidfootballchildren Narrative tension is primarily about withholding information. Ian Mcewan tensioninformationnarrative come back, come back to me Ian Mcewan come-back-to-me This is how the entire course of a life can be changed - by doing nothing. Ian Mcewan doing-nothingcourseschanged Be wary of too much calm, particularly in your mid-fifties. Ian Mcewan calmexistentialtoo-much 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 politicalviewsthinking 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 writingbeachdirty In a story you only had to wish, you only had to write it down and you could have the world...It seemed so obvious now that it was too late: a story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it. Reading a sentence and understanding it were the same thing; as with the crooking of a finger, nothing lay between them. There was no gap during which the symbols were unraveled. Ian Mcewan readingwritingmean She returned his gaze, struck by the sense of her own transformation, and overwhelmed by the beauty which a lifetime havit had taught her to ignore. Ian Mcewan overwhelmedtransformationtaught By measuring individual human worth, the novelist reveals the full enormity of the State Ian Mcewan individualitynovelistsstates You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan. Ian Mcewan passivity-iswritingmen At the risk of sounding like Virginia Woolf, I could live on £700 a year. Ian Mcewan virginiariskyears I believe the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction. Ian Mcewan ramblingperfectbelieve
