Author Profile
Ian Mcewan
1948 • British • Author
52
Total Quotes
Collected Meditations
Showing 52 quotesIt 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
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
Something is missing in our culture. We can't quite celebrate the scientific literary tradition.— 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
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
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
I wouldn't mind being the lead guitarist in an incredibly successful rock band. However, I don't play the guitar.— Ian Mcewan
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
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
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
What is it precisely, that feeling of 'returning' from a poem? Something is lighter, softer, larger - then it fades, but never completely.— 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