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" 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
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" 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
" 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
" 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 don't really believe in evil at all. "
Ian Mcewan
Believe
Evil
Really
" 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
" 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
" Politics is the enemy of the imagination. "
Ian Mcewan
Enemy
Politics
Imagination
" I was an intimate sort of child who never spoke up in groups. I preferred close friends. "
Ian Mcewan
Child
Close Friends
Never
" 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
" 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
" I often don't read reviews. "
Ian Mcewan
Read
Reviews
Often
" You can spin stories out of the ways people understand and misunderstand each other. "
Ian Mcewan
Stories
Out
People
" If I could write the perfect novella I would die happy. "
Ian Mcewan
If I Could
Perfect
Happy
" I've yet to meet somebody who said, 'Your stories are so revolting I couldn't read them.' "
Ian Mcewan
Somebody
Said
Who
" I actually find novels that are determined to be funny at every turn quite oppressive. "
Ian Mcewan
Quite
Funny
Determined
" We overvalue the arts in relation to the sciences. "
Ian Mcewan
Arts
Relation
Sciences
" Reading reviews makes you thin-skinned. It's like waves washing layers off your skin. "
Ian Mcewan
You
Waves
Layers
" The best way to tell people about climate change is through non-fiction. There's a vast literature of outstanding writing on the subject. "
Ian Mcewan
Change
People
Way
" True intelligence requires fabulous imagination. "
Ian Mcewan
Intelligence
True
Imagination
" I want to live in a place where strangers rush to help someone in distress. "
Ian Mcewan
Strangers
Place
Live
" 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
" 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
" Some people are tied to five hundred words a day, six days a week. I'm a hesitater. "
Ian Mcewan
Week
Some People
People
" 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 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
" Something is missing in our culture. We can't quite celebrate the scientific literary tradition. "
Ian Mcewan
Tradition
Celebrate
Culture
" 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
" 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
" 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
More
Great
" 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