Ian Mcewan Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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If I can hit No. 1 on the 'New York Times' best-seller list, I'm thinking of having the entire list tattooed on my body somewhere. It would be fabulous.
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Some of the best ideas that we've invested in have made no sense to conventional sources.
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The crack of the bat, the sound of baseballs thumping into gloves, the infield chatter are like birdsong to the baseball starved.
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You can't show up at the bedside and then turn on your skills. You have to keep your game sharp all the time.
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I'm inspired every time I see a role I'd like to play, an actor turn in a well crafted performance, a story I'd like to tell, direct or produce.
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I think there is a generation gap. I personally look forward to, as our generation becomes the leaders, you are gonna see a change, and I think hopefully gay marriage will be a part of that country.
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We must not be hampered by yesterday's myths in concentrating on today's needs.
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When I draw something, the brain and the hands work together.
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When I think about parallels between myself and an Olympian, I believe that success in the world of business is underpinned by very similar principles of perseverance and hard work.
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I learned to play piano in a rock n' roll context or band context from country records - you know, Floyd Cramer - and from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Stax. And none of those are keyboard records.
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I work rather blindly. I have a theory that seems to work with me that some of the best things you ever do sort of come through you. You don't know where you get the impetus and response to what's before your eyes.
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The Doomsayers have always had their uses, since they trigger the coping mechanism that often prevents the events they forecast.
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That's the American way. If little kids don't aspire to make money like I did, what the hell good is this country?
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I'm very much bigger than I was, so what? It's not really fatness, it's development.
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You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake. I am known for the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far.
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Life is a great disappointment.
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If it is to be done well, child-rearing requires, more than most activities of life, a good deal of decentering from one's own needs and perspectives. Such decentering is relatively easy when a society is stable and when there is an extended, supportive structure that the parent can depend upon.
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The queers of the sixties, like those since, have connived with their repression under a veneer of respectability. Good mannered city queens in suits and pinstripes, so busy establishing themselves, were useless at changing anything.
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Bioterrorism is like earthquakes, you should think in order of magnitudes. If you can kill 10 people that's a one, 100 people that's a two... Bioterrorism is the thing that can give you not just sixes, but sevens, eights and nines.
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My dad used to say, 'Just because you dress up in a coat and tie, it doesn't influence your intelligence.'
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I believe that God felt sorry for actors so he created Hollywood to give them a place in the sun and a swimming pool. The price they had to pay was to surrender their talent.
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A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison.
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The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.
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We overvalue the arts in relation to the sciences.
