Ian McEwan Quotes

• Some people are tied to five hundred words a day, six days a week. I’m a hesitater.

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Words

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Playing, Idea, Giants

• Reading reviews makes you thin-skinned. It’s like waves washing layers off your skin.

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Washing, Layers

• Perhaps the greatest reading pleasure has an element of self-annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist.

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Greatest, Pleasure

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Something, Great

• Now, I’m an atheist. I really don’t believe for a moment that our moral sense comes from a god.

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Believe, Moral

• Novelists have to be adept at controlling the flow of information, and, most crucially, they have to be in charge of the narrative.

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Information, Controlling

• 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

• 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

•  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

• 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

• 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

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

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Experience

  Tags in Writer, Letter

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

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Perfect, Happy

• 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

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

  Ian McEwan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Help, Someone, Strangers

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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Births

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Deaths

• 1955 - Joseph Martin McCabe
• 1784 - George Savile
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• 1951 - Sinclair Lewis
• 1982 - Paul Lynde