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Ian Mcewan Biography

Ian Russell McEwan CBE FRSA FRSL (born 21 June 1948) is an English novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, The Times featured him on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945" and The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 19 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture".

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Ian Mcewan Quotes

I think the Americans are dying to leave Iraq. I was against the war but longed for the fall of Saddam; the decision to go to war clearly was taken long before the matter reached the U. N. , given its inevitability. I kept my fingers crossed for the emergence of democracy in Iraq even if that would mean victory for a man whose politics I have little sympathy with.

Crossed, Fall, Man, Taken, War

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

Barely, Elements, Exist, Reading, Self

I find it very difficult to talk about unwritten works. It's never useful to start putting words casually around the flimsiest of notions. I finished Saturday only in late November and I'm now in the rather pleasant stage of traveling, reading and waiting.

November, Putting, Reading, Saturday, Start, Waiting

None of us really either know the circumstances of our death or are likely to exert as much control over it as we would like to, but we can certainly have a little more say in it if we are terminally ill than we have at the moment. That's the element of dignity, but sure, life is very hard to organise even when you are fit and healthy.

Dignity, Elements, Hard, Healthy, Likely, Littles

How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime.

Detail, Eternal, Fingered, Guilt, Rosary, Self

What reader wants to be told what attitude to strike?

Attitude, Reader, Strike, Strikes, Told, Want

He was looking at her with amused suspicion. There was something between them, and even she had to acknowledge that a tame remark about the weather sounded perverse.

Acknowledge, Amused, Suspicion, Tame, Weather

A story lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken

Gesture, Gestures, Made, Spoken, Stories, Word

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

Die, Dies, Novella, Perfect, Write, Writing

By concentrating on what is good in people, by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice, and by asking them to put their faith in the future, socialists put themselves at a severe disadvantage.

Asking, Idealism, Justice, People, Severe

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 had started a bombing campaign in English cities; politics were fantastically polarized between left and right.

Cities, Energy, Kind, Polarized, Politics, Terrorist Groups

This is how the entire course of a life can be changed: by doing nothing.

Changed, Courses, Doing Nothing, Entire, Nothing

I'm delighted when people respond with passion and readily intensity to my work. Literature is not as the economist would put it a positional good; in other words, there is infinite space for good literature.

Good, Intensity, Literature, Passion, People, Space

He had never before felt so self-consciously young, nor experienced such appetite, such impatience for the story to begin.

Experienced, Impatience, Self, Stories, Young

one could drown in irrelevance.

Drown, Irrelevance

Love doesn't grow at a steady rate, but advances in surges, bolts, wild leaps, and this was one of those.

Advances, Grows, Leap, Rate, Surges

True intelligence requires fabulous imagination.

Fabulous, Imagination, Intelligence, Requires, True, True Intelligence

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

English, Personal, Secrecy, Social, Would Be

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.

Gaze, Havit, Ignore, Overwhelmed, Taught, Transformation

Observing human variety can give pleasure, but so too can human sameness.

Enduring Love, Giving, Observing, Pleasure, Sameness, Variety

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