Ian Mcewan Quotes

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Ian Mcewan

Profession : Author

Birth : June 21, 1948

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

Ian Mcewan

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

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

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

Ian Mcewan

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

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

Something is missing in our culture. We can't quite celebrate the scientific literary tradition.

Ian Mcewan

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

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

The end of secrecy would be the end of the novel - especially the English novel. The English novel requires social secrecy, personal secrecy.

Ian Mcewan