Ian Mcewan Quotes

Reading reviews makes you thin-skinned. It's like waves washing layers off your skin.

Ian Mcewan

• Reading
• Waves
• Skin

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Quotes to Explore

• There is a recurring temptation for any nation, and for any writer who operates within its field of force, to make an ornament of the past: to turn the losses to victories and to restate humiliations as triumphs.

  

  Eavan Boland
  • Past
  • Temptation
  • Ornament

• I was raised Catholic in Rockford, Illinois. But I'm not a practicing Catholic anymore. Oh God, no.

  

  Natasha Leggero
  • God
  • Catholic
  • Anymore

• I am really curious about life, about why we are all here. I notice my skin is ageing, things are changing, I've seen people dying, so that's the train we are all on.

  

  Damien Rice
  • People
  • Life
  • Train

• 'Giving 2.0' frames giving as a learning experience and encourages everyone to make giving a part of your year-round life.

  

  Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen
  • Life
  • Experience
  • Giving

• It's quite rare that you find models taken care of backstage.

  

  Abbey Lee Kershaw
  • You
  • Taken
  • Care

• Being a public servant, this is a serious job, not like a boxer, you're entertaining people.

  

  Manny Pacquiao
  • People
  • Job
  • Serious

• The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human.

  

  Victor Hugo
  • Men
  • Sea
  • Forest

• Painting bodies with the patterns of Kusama's hallucinations obliterated their individual selves and returned them to the infinite universe.

  

  Yayoi Kusama
  • Universe
  • Painting
  • Patterns

• I am very different to how people think I am. It's the characters I play that they are responding to.

  

  Orlando Bloom
  • People
  • Play
  • Characters

• I have odd thumbs that are extremely flexible. I can bend them quite far down the back side of my hand, basically the opposite side you'd even try to attempt bending your thumb. Because of that, I'm a very good thumb wrestler.

  

  Laura Mennell
  • Good
  • Hand
  • Try

• In China, we don't know about the swimming pool game, but we know about Marco Polo.

  

  Zhu Zhu
  • Game
  • Know
  • Pool

• After I recovered from 'Lioness', I wanted to write something about animals because I really like mythical creatures, especially dragons. At 12, I was one of those semi-recluses who did better with animals than people. Out of that, came the character, Daine, who could communicate with animals.

  

  Tamora Pierce
  • People
  • Character
  • Better

• I mean, I would have loved to have kept on being a big television star. If that's the way things would have broke, I would have loved to have done that. I just didn't really want to continue and be someone who took whatever was offered.

  

  Gabe Kaplan
  • Done
  • Want
  • Star

• I always tell students that writing a poem and publishing it are two quite separate things, and you should write what you have to write, and if you're afraid it's going to upset someone, don't publish it.

  

  Wendy Cope
  • Writing
  • You
  • Students

• My parents spent 16 years hauling my butt to L.A. for audition after audition. I remember always hoping I could help take care of them because they took such good care of me.

  

  Kaley Cuoco
  • Good
  • Remember
  • Help

• The hardest thing about being an unpublished writer is that there's always that voice in your head that asks if you're really being a fool. You might just really stink and not know it. You have to have a lot of blind faith in the process. You have to like it so much that you're going to do it anyway.

  

  Watt Key
  • Faith
  • Voice
  • Fool

• In many cases your imagination is much more effective than what can be shown. It primes you to know something is about to happen - the anticipation and anxiety is worse than what ends up happening.

  

  Oren Peli
  • Up
  • Know
  • Imagination

• I don't like to Google myself. I try and avoid it whenever I can.

  

  Patrick Stump Fall Out Boy
  • Myself
  • Try
  • I Can

• My dad is an economist who does global development research. What he practices is a kind of quantifiable empathy: trying to empathize with systems rather than people.

  

  Leslie Jamison
  • People
  • Trying
  • Dad

• I had a big time punk-rock phase and psychobilly phase. I used to go mad for the Guana Batz.

  

  Imelda May
  • Time
  • Rock
  • Mad

• I don't understand the ones that have no sense of hope and invest in hate. That's not gonna work out, you know? It's a waste of your time!

  

  Tom Petty Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
  • Time
  • Work
  • Hope

• I write about all manner of things: a guy fighting aliens in the New York State Library, Antarctica, Inca civilization in Peru, the Great Pyramid at Giza, and people often ask me, where do I get these ideas from? They come from reading widely, watching a lot of documentaries, and increasingly ,as I was able to, travelling around the world.

  

  Matthew Reilly
  • People
  • World
  • Great

• I'm always reading books-as many as there are. I ration myself on them so that I'll always be in supply.

  

  Ernest Hemingway
  • Book
  • Reading
  • Rations

• Reading reviews makes you thin-skinned. It's like waves washing layers off your skin.

  

  Ian Mcewan
  • Reading
  • Waves
  • Skin