Ian McEwan Quotes

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Guess, Writing, Things

• 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

  Topics in Intelligence

  Tags in Apologize, Decent, Obvious

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Believe, Religions, Actually

• I don’t hold grudges.

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Really

•  I don’t really believe in evil at all.

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Believe, Really

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Think, Described, Novelists, Myself

• 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

  Topics in Confidence

  Tags in Think, Strength

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

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Help, Someone, Strangers

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

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Friends, Intimate

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

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Successful, Incredibly

• I’ve yet to meet somebody who said, ‘Your stories are so revolting I couldn’t read them.’

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Stories, Said

• I’m quite good at not writing.

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Good, Writing

• If I could write the perfect novella I would die happy.

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Perfect, Happy

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

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Experience

  Tags in Writer, Letter

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Matter, Information, Simply

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Good, Writing, Historical

•  London in the ’70s was a pretty catastrophic dump, I can tell you. We had every kind of industrial trouble; we had severe energy problems; we were under constant terrorist attack from Irish terrorist groups who started a bombing campaign in English cities; politics were fantastically polarized between left and right.

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Politics

  Tags in Terrorist, Fantastically, Trouble

• My father’s drinking was sometimes a problem. And a great deal went unspoken. He was not particularly acute or articulate about the emotions. But he was very affectionate towards me.

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Great, Affectionate, Problem, Drinking

• Not being boring is quite a challenge.

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Challenge

  Tags in Boring, Quite

• My parents were keen for me to have the education they themselves never had. They weren’t able to guide me towards particular books, but they encouraged me to read, which I did, randomly and compulsively.

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Education

  Tags in Books, Particular

Ian McEwan (60)

Birth:	21st June, 1948
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Novelist, Screenwriter

About

Ian Russell McEwan was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, England. He is an English novelist and screenwriter. He earned his degree in English literature from the University of Sussex in 1970. He earned his master's degree in literature from the University of East Anglia in 1971. He has written several novels include: The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers, The Child in Time, The Innocent, Black Dogs, Enduring Love, Amsterdam(Won- Man Booker Prize for Fiction), Atonement, Saturday, On Chesil Beach, Solar, Sweet Tooth, The Children Act, and Nutshell. His Short story collections including First Love, Last Rites and In Between the Sheets. He has written two TV plays include: Jack Flea's Birthday Celebration and The Imitation Game. He has written several films include: The Ploughman's Lunch, Soursweet, The Good Son, On Chesil Beach, and The Children Act. In 2011, he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society.

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Today's Anniversary - 10th January

Births

• 1946 - Aynsley Dunbar
• 1948 - Donald Fagen
• 1982 - Josh Ryan Evans
• 1936 - Al Goldstein
• 1963 - Mark Lunsford Pryor

Deaths

• 1784 - George Savile
• 1863 - Lyman Beecher
• 1982 - Paul Lynde
• 1951 - Sinclair Lewis
• 2004 - Alexandra Ripley