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" I don't hold grudges. "
Ian Mcewan
Grudges
Hold
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" If I could write the perfect novella I would die happy. "
Ian Mcewan
If I Could
Perfect
Happy
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I don't really believe in evil at all. "
Ian Mcewan
Believe
Evil
Really
" You could say that all novels are spy novels and all novelists are spy masters. "
Ian Mcewan
Could
You
Spy
" Now, I'm an atheist. I really don't believe for a moment that our moral sense comes from a god. "
Ian Mcewan
Sense
Believe
God
" Reading reviews makes you thin-skinned. It's like waves washing layers off your skin. "
Ian Mcewan
You
Waves
Layers
" Politics is the enemy of the imagination. "
Ian Mcewan
Enemy
Politics
Imagination
" In my experience an appreciative letter from a fellow writer means a lot. "
Ian Mcewan
Writer
Fellow
Letter
" It is not the first duty of the novelist to provide blueprints for insurrection, or uplifting tales of successful resistance for the benefit of the opposition. The naming of what is there is what is important. "
Ian Mcewan
Resistance
Successful
Duty
" I want to live in a place where strangers rush to help someone in distress. "
Ian Mcewan
Strangers
Place
Live
" Something is missing in our culture. We can't quite celebrate the scientific literary tradition. "
Ian Mcewan
Tradition
Celebrate
Culture
" 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. "
Ian Mcewan
Scottish
British
You
" 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 was an intimate sort of child who never spoke up in groups. I preferred close friends. "
Ian Mcewan
Child
Close Friends
Never
" I apologize for being obvious, but every time I watch the curtain come down on even a halfway decent production of a Shakespeare play I feel a little sorrowful that I'll never know the man, or any man of such warm intelligence. "
Ian Mcewan
Man
Play
Know
" 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
" You can spin stories out of the ways people understand and misunderstand each other. "
Ian Mcewan
Stories
Out
People
" 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've yet to meet somebody who said, 'Your stories are so revolting I couldn't read them.' "
Ian Mcewan
Somebody
Said
Who
" One important theme is the extent to which one can ever correct an error, especially outside any frame of religious forgiveness. All of us have done something we regret - how we manage to remove that from our conscience, or whether that's even possible, interested me. "
Ian Mcewan
Me
Done
Regret
" I'm quite good at not writing. "
Ian Mcewan
Good
Writing
Quite
" I wouldn't mind being the lead guitarist in an incredibly successful rock band. However, I don't play the guitar. "
Ian Mcewan
Successful
Rock
Guitar
" Not being boring is quite a challenge. "
Ian Mcewan
Boring
Being
Quite
" At the risk of sounding like Virginia Woolf, I could live on £700 a year. "
Ian Mcewan
Risk
Could
Like
" One has to have the courage of one's pessimism. "
Ian Mcewan
Pessimism
Courage
" 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. "
Ian Mcewan
Tools
Never
Stand
" I actually find novels that are determined to be funny at every turn quite oppressive. "
Ian Mcewan
Quite
Funny
Determined
" The end of secrecy would be the end of the novel - especially the English novel. The English novel requires social secrecy, personal secrecy. "
Ian Mcewan
End
Social
Secrecy