Ian Mcewan Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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I was staying with my sister and messing around with the guitar every day for my own amusement. Then she took me around and introduced me to Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Little Walter, and the first time I saw that onstage, it inspired me to play. I thought that was the world.
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My second-grade teacher went around the class and asked everybody what they were going to be when they grew up. I said, 'I want to travel the world,' and he said, 'You'll be married and pregnant by 21, just like all the girls in this room.'
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When I was around eight, I learned how to touch-type at school, and I received a computer as a present. I started writing plays, and for many years I thought I would be a playwright.
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I think 'North by Northwest' and 'Rope' and Rear Window' and 'Psycho' are on my list of favorite all time movies. I just think his kind of command as a director was almost unparalleled, and I feel like in certain ways the sort of character-based thriller owes more to Hitchcock than anyone.
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When life knocks you down, keep getting up.
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I wonder if there'll ever be a time where you're not judged by your appearance. It seems that wherever you've got to, your appearance is always discussed. It's never said about men. We talk about a man's charisma, not his looks.
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If at noon you sit down and there's just silence or blank tape, in an hour if you have a song, that didn't exist an hour ago. Now it exists and it might exist for a long time. There's something empowering about that.
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When I first met Mandela, we did not discuss anything of substance; we just felt each other out. He spent a long time expressing his admiration for the Boer generals and how ingenious they were during the Anglo-Boer war.
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When I was little I had this notion of being a marine biologist. I grew up by the ocean so I was always in the water but realistically, I don't think I would make the best marine biologist.
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The one thing that I appear to have been given, bearing in mind that I am capable of being very, very scatty and extremely lazy, is the ability to concentrate on something I choose to give my time to.
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Our movements reveal a great deal about who we are. A record of our locations over time can reveal whether we go to tent revivals or radical political meetings, abortion clinics or AIDS doctors.
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Any time you make more than a couple of friends at an event, I think that you actually made no friends.
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I've been writing about my boyhood, when I was a little kid back on my grandfather's farm where we didn't know about black widow spiders or all that stuff. But writing about that is so easy.
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Once you become an Olympic champion, you are expected to win all the time.
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For me, it was very important to be part of a boxing film that actually explores the psychological aspects of the sport, more than just the physical aspects. I haven't seen boxing movies very often that really go so deep into the minds of the boxers. It really puts out how much it is about strategy and tactics and technique.
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I've read a couple of things that I was sort of close to having a nervous breakdown. But I don't think I was. I was very, very tired. It was a really difficult time.
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I had a lot of times with Wales as well when we were getting beat - and beaten well - and you learn to deal with it. You learn that next time it happens, you roll your sleeves up and give everything for the team.
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California is infamous for passing things and then waking up and saying, 'What the hell did we just pass?'
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If you can make the song a soundtrack to what you're living at the time, I think that's the most important part of a song.
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Ignorance and greed are part of the evolutionary process, which is just to say that mistakes are part of learning. There is nothing bad about behaviors or perceptions that do not work; they simply have to be given up and replaced by behaviors or perceptions that do work.
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I have a fear of public speaking. It's very hard work. Words are not my skill, and because they're not my skill, I have to work doubly hard.
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I'm not trying to follow a set of rules and stuff. I'm just living my life.
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Other people are talking about writing books about my life, or about some of the things I've done. I find it strange, but I also feel it's my life and my story, and I guess I better be the one to get it on paper the way it actually happened.
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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.
