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" Something is missing in our culture. We can't quite celebrate the scientific literary tradition. "
Ian Mcewan
Tradition
Celebrate
Culture
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" I actually find novels that are determined to be funny at every turn quite oppressive. "
Ian Mcewan
Quite
Funny
Determined
" At the risk of sounding like Virginia Woolf, I could live on £700 a year. "
Ian Mcewan
Risk
Could
Like
" 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
" Reading reviews makes you thin-skinned. It's like waves washing layers off your skin. "
Ian Mcewan
You
Waves
Layers
" 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
" 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
" 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
" One has to have the courage of one's pessimism. "
Ian Mcewan
Pessimism
Courage
" I'm quite good at not writing. "
Ian Mcewan
Good
Writing
Quite
" I was an intimate sort of child who never spoke up in groups. I preferred close friends. "
Ian Mcewan
Child
Close Friends
Never
" 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
" 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
" 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 often don't read reviews. "
Ian Mcewan
Read
Reviews
Often
" We overvalue the arts in relation to the sciences. "
Ian Mcewan
Arts
Relation
Sciences
" Politics is the enemy of the imagination. "
Ian Mcewan
Enemy
Politics
Imagination
" 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. "
Ian Mcewan
Emotions
Problem
Father
" True intelligence requires fabulous imagination. "
Ian Mcewan
Intelligence
True
Imagination
" I don't really believe in evil at all. "
Ian Mcewan
Believe
Evil
Really
" 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 don't believe there's any inherent darkness at the center of religion at all. I think religion actually is a morally neutral force. "
Ian Mcewan
Darkness
Think
Religion
" 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
" I've yet to meet somebody who said, 'Your stories are so revolting I couldn't read them.' "
Ian Mcewan
Somebody
Said
Who
" What is it precisely, that feeling of 'returning' from a poem? Something is lighter, softer, larger - then it fades, but never completely. "
Ian Mcewan
Returning
Never
Feeling
" 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
" 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
" You could say that all novels are spy novels and all novelists are spy masters. "
Ian Mcewan
Could
You
Spy
" 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
" 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
" 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