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" I always used to deny this, but I guess what I'm really saying is that I was writing to shock... And I dug deep and dredged up all kinds of vile things which fascinated me at the time. "

Ian Mcewan

Time

Always

Writing

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" Politics is the enemy of the imagination. "

" I wouldn't mind being the lead guitarist in an incredibly successful rock band. However, I don't play the guitar. "

" Oh, I've become immune to the Booker. I think we need something a little more like the Pulitzer prize, where there isn't this great race. "

Ian Mcewan

Become

Great

" I actually find novels that are determined to be funny at every turn quite oppressive. "

" 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. "

" Something is missing in our culture. We can't quite celebrate the scientific literary tradition. "

" A twenty-one-year-old writer is likely to be inhibited by a lack of usable experience. Childhood and adolescence were something I knew. "

" 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. "

" You could say that all novels are spy novels and all novelists are spy masters. "

" The best way to tell people about climate change is through non-fiction. There's a vast literature of outstanding writing on the subject. "

" 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. "

" I often don't read reviews. "

" I'm quite good at not writing. "

" 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. "

" I want to live in a place where strangers rush to help someone in distress. "

" Not being boring is quite a challenge. "

" 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. "

" Some people are tied to five hundred words a day, six days a week. I'm a hesitater. "

" 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. "

" You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan. "

" 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. "

" I was an intimate sort of child who never spoke up in groups. I preferred close friends. "

" 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. "

" 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

Poet

" At the risk of sounding like Virginia Woolf, I could live on £700 a year. "

Ian Mcewan

Risk

Could

" 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. "

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