Ian Mcewan
Ian Mcewan
Ian Russell McEwan CBE FRSA FRSLis an English novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, The Times featured him on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth21 June 1948
religious art simple
Finally he spoke the three simple words that no amount of bad art or bad faith can every quite cheapen. She repeated them, with exactly the same slight emphasis on the second word, as though she were the one to say them first. He had no religious belief, but it was impossible not to think of an invisible presence or witness in the room, and that these words spoken aloud were like signatures on an unseen contract.
acute articulate deal drinking great towards
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.
art discovery ideas
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.
art israel way
There are ways in which art can have a longer reach than politics...
art civilization holocaust
In the first half of the 20th Century, we lived through human disasters on a scale unimaginable. The Holocaust was once suggested would be the end of not only civilization, but art, too.
dream cost littles
The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.
education encouraged guide keen particular randomly themselves towards
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.
english poets
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.
reads third worked
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.
We overvalue the arts in relation to the sciences.
five hundred people six tied
Some people are tied to five hundred words a day, six days a week. I'm a hesitater.
children human locked mortgage work
The moment you have children and a mortgage you want things to work; you're locked into the human project and you want it to flourish.
english fascinates literary poet regards
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.
above became began bubble commented contained include interested literature somehow trying within work
When I began I thought that literature was contained within a bubble that somehow floated above the world commented upon by newspapers. But I became more and more interested in trying to include some of that world within my work.