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" 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
Half
Better
Thinks
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" The best way to tell people about climate change is through non-fiction. There's a vast literature of outstanding writing on the subject. "
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" True intelligence requires fabulous imagination. "
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Intelligence
True
Imagination
" 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. "
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Scottish
British
You
" 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. "
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" Politics is the enemy of the imagination. "
Ian Mcewan
Enemy
Politics
Imagination
" 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
Example
Me
Poet
" 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
You
Trouble
Problems
" I want to live in a place where strangers rush to help someone in distress. "
Ian Mcewan
Strangers
Place
Live
" 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
Parents
Education
Books
" 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. "
Ian Mcewan
Test
You
Good
" 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
Narrative
Most
Information
" Not being boring is quite a challenge. "
Ian Mcewan
Boring
Being
Quite
" Something is missing in our culture. We can't quite celebrate the scientific literary tradition. "
Ian Mcewan
Tradition
Celebrate
Culture
" Atheists have as much conscience, possibly more, than people with deep religious conviction, and they still have the same problem of how they reconcile themselves to a bad deed in the past. It's a little easier if you've got a god to forgive you. "
Ian Mcewan
You
People
Problem
" 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
Debate
Matter
Become
" Some people are tied to five hundred words a day, six days a week. I'm a hesitater. "
Ian Mcewan
Week
Some People
People
" I'm quite good at not writing. "
Ian Mcewan
Good
Writing
Quite
" What I've discovered and really confirmed to myself is that opera really likes loud colours, and you need something bold, something savage, unpredictable, passionate. You can't really run a two-hour opera round some muted murmuring. "
Ian Mcewan
Bold
You
Run
" I don't really believe in evil at all. "
Ian Mcewan
Believe
Evil
Really
" Perhaps the greatest reading pleasure has an element of self-annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist. "
Ian Mcewan
Reading
Greatest
Know
" In my experience an appreciative letter from a fellow writer means a lot. "
Ian Mcewan
Writer
Fellow
Letter
" A twenty-one-year-old writer is likely to be inhibited by a lack of usable experience. Childhood and adolescence were something I knew. "
Ian Mcewan
Adolescence
Experience
Childhood
" 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. "
Ian Mcewan
Trying
Literature
Thought
" I don't hold grudges. "
Ian Mcewan
Grudges
Hold
" 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. "
Ian Mcewan
Want
Human
Moment
" 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. "
Ian Mcewan
Good
Justice
People
" You could say that all novels are spy novels and all novelists are spy masters. "
Ian Mcewan
Could
You
Spy
" At the risk of sounding like Virginia Woolf, I could live on £700 a year. "
Ian Mcewan
Risk
Could
Like
" You can spin stories out of the ways people understand and misunderstand each other. "
Ian Mcewan
Stories
Out
People
" 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
Confidence
Think
Strength