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
writing mean thinking
I couldn't think about novels at all. It seemed the only writing that was appropriate to that horrendous event was journalism, reportage. And, in fact, I think the profession rose quite honorably to the task. Novelists require a slower turnover, I mean, in time.
writing giving people
When people ask, "Is there any advice you'd give a young writer?," I say write short stories. They afford lots of failure. Pastiche is a great way to start.
writing
I'm quite good at not writing.
writing perfect if-i-could
If I could write the perfect novella I would die happy.
beach dirty writing
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.
reading mean writing
In a story you only had to wish, you only had to write it down and you could have the world...It seemed so obvious now that it was too late: a story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it. Reading a sentence and understanding it were the same thing; as with the crooking of a finger, nothing lay between them. There was no gap during which the symbols were unraveled.
writing people fiction
The best way to tell people about climate change is through non-fiction. There's a vast literature of outstanding writing on the subject.
sadness writing confusion
But how to do feelings? All very well to write "She felt sad", or describe what a sad person might do, but what of sadness itself, how was that put across so it could be felt in all its lowering immediacy? Even harder was the threat, or the confusion of feeling contradictory things.
writing stronger might
At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.
writing imagination fancy
Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?
driven higher tough
This was a tough decision, but it was driven by our need for higher temperatures. This is not a cost-cutting measure.
develop dusty entire
It's just a little dusty valley. There is nothing there. We're going to have to develop the entire site.
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.
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.