Ian Mcewan Quotes
Twenty years ago I might have hired a professional listener, but somewhere along the way I had lost faith in the talking cure. A genteel fraud in my view.
Quotes to Explore
-
My purpose as a writer is to communicate in such a way as to challenge the thinking of readers and touch their hearts.
-
I always say three things make a writer: inspiration, obviously; perspiration, doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else, or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.
-
You know what I like? I like classic stuff. I like 'The Andy Griffith Show' – the variety of characters was so amazing to me.
-
Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
-
The American dream always meant that anybody willing to put in a hard day's work could make a decent living. That's just not true anymore for people without at least some post-high school education.
-
You don't drown by falling into water. You only drown if you stay there.
-
If the Soviet Union and the United States have not experienced direct military confrontations, on the other hand, they supported, armed and trained Africans, to fight other Africans.
-
In San Francisco, I found Warren Levinson, who had set up a program to study Rous Sarcoma Virus, an archetype for what we now call retroviruses. At the time, the replication of retroviruses was one of the great puzzles of animal virology. Levinson, Levintow and I joined forces in the hope of solving that puzzle.
-
If you are good at studies, and you want to play cricket, you may work harder than any other person, but you may not achieve it. So it's something you have to balance in life and be practical where you are good and then channelise your efforts in the right direction to be successful in life.
-
Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.
-
You can tell a lot about a person just by watching their facial expressions. But there are times when it's best to hide your feelings, especially at work.
-
I have a publishing company of books by me and books of others. It drew people to poetry readings and photo exhibitions and painting exhibitions that I've been doing for years before that.
-
I think, in Spain, they are too used to reaching the limits of democracy and then stepping over them.
-
What you wear onstage is a reflection of your artistry.
-
I grew up with a tribe of amazing women, but certainly my mother and my godmother really modeled women as actors.
-
I'm glad that I just played baseball, because I'm sure I had a much longer baseball career than I would've had a football career. I did miss football, but I didn't miss some of the injuries from football.
-
The greatest compliment a writer can be given is that a story and character hold a reader spellbound. I'm caught up in the story writing and I miss a good deal of sleep thinking about it and working out the plot points.
-
Many people in the West do not realise how oppressive some Muslim states are - both for men and for women. This is a cultural issue, not an Islamic one.
-
A man's reach must exceed his grasp or what's a metaphor? (p.7)
-
I should describe mine own nature as tripartite, my interests consisting of three parallel and dissociated groups-(a) Love of the strange and fantastic. (b) Love of the abstract truth and of scientific logick. (c) Love of the ancient and the permanent. Sundry combinations of these three strains will probably account for all my odd tastes and eccentricities.
-
p. i; Preface
-
Twenty years ago I might have hired a professional listener, but somewhere along the way I had lost faith in the talking cure. A genteel fraud in my view.
