Writers are said to have superstitions and little rituals. Readers have them too. — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
I actually find novels that are determined to be funny at every turn quite oppressive. — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
Novels help us to resist the temptation to think of the past as deficient. — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
You could say that all novels are spy novels and all novelists are spy masters. — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
The evasions of her little novel were exactly those of her life. Everything she did not wish to confront was also missing… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
Reading groups, readings, breakdowns of book sales all tell the same story: when women stop reading, the novel will be dead. — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
I like to think that each book I start is a completely new departure But I’ve learned that whatever you do, readers… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
I'm sorry to say that far worse things have happened and the literature of the Holocaust is a witness to the capacity… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
My parents were keen for me to have the education they themselves never had. They weren't able to guide me towards particular… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
Perhaps the greatest reading pleasure has an element of self-annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist. — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
“The novel is too capacious, inclusive, unruly, and personal for perfection. Too long, sometimes too much like life.” — Ian McEwan Copy Share Image
There was, in my view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honour. No single element of an imagined… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
When I began I thought that literature was contained within a bubble that somehow floated above the world commented upon by newspapers.… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
“The Anglican service today was more familiar to me from movies. Like one of the great Shakespeare speeches, the graveside oration, studded… — Ian McEwan Copy Share Image
I couldn't think about novels at all. It seemed the only writing that was appropriate to that horrendous event was journalism, reportage.… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
“Despite his first, the study of English literature seemed in retrospect an absorbing parlor game, and reading books and having opinions about… — Ian McEwan Copy Share Image
“Anyone watching me might have thought I was consulting a reference book, I turned the pages so fast. And I suppose I… — Ian McEwan Copy Share Image
She had lolled about for three years at Girton with the kind of books she could equally have read at home--Jane Austen,… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
“We have many shelves of poetry at home, but still, it takes an effort to step out of the daily narrative of… — Ian McEwan Copy Share Image
“He did. He researched her. Someone told him that she had a special interest in John Milton. It did not take long… — Ian McEwan Copy Share Image
“You pull a book from the shelf and there was an invention... Almost like cooking, I thought sleepily. Instead of heat transforming… — Ian McEwan Copy Share Image
“The age of clear answers was over. So was the age of characters and plots. Despite her journal sketches, she no longer… — Ian McEwan Copy Share Image
“I craved a form of naive realism. I paid special attention, I craned my readerly neck whenever a London street I knew… — Ian McEwan Copy Share Image
I've yet to meet somebody who said, 'Your stories are so revolting I couldn't read them.' — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
How often one reads a contemporary full-length novel and thinks quietly, mutinously, that it would have worked out better at half or… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
“My ideal state as a reader when I’m reading other people is feeling I’m vaguely wasting my time when I’m not reading… — Ian McEwan Copy Share Image
I think of novels in architectural terms. You have to enter at the gate, and this gate must be constructed in such… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
“I read anything I saw lying around. Pulp fiction, great literature and everything in between - I gave them all the same… — Ian McEwan Copy Share Image
The end of secrecy would be the end of the novel - especially the English novel. The English novel requires social secrecy,… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
“We were the only customers downstairs in the shop and there were no windows and only two dim bulbs, without shades. There… — Ian McEwan Copy Share Image
I was the basest of readers. All I wanted was my own world, and myself in it, given back to me in… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
I'm delighted when people respond with passion and readily intensity to my work. Literature is not as the economist would put it… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“As you will see, we do not believe that artists have an obligation to strike up attitudes to the war. Indeed, they are wise… — Ian McEwan Copy Share
You could say that all novels are spy novels and all novelists are spy masters. — Ian Mcewan Copy Share
I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life. — Ian Mcewan Copy Share
“It is shaming sometimes, how the body will not, or cannot, lie about emotions.” — Ian McEwan Copy Share
“While my friends struggled and calculated, I reached a solution by a set of floating steps that were partly visual, partly just a feeling… — Ian McEwan Copy Share
“Once, on a walk by a river- Eskdale in low reddish sunlight, with a dusting of snow- his daughter quoted to him an opening… — Ian McEwan Copy Share
“Perhaps it's one of those cases of a microcosm giving you the whole world. Like a spode dinner plate. Or a single cell. Or,… — Ian McEwan Copy Share
Who you get, and how it works out- there's so much luck involved, as well as the million branching consequences of your conscious choice… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share
“On Chesil Beach he could have called out to Florence, he could have gone after her. He did not know, or would not have… — Ian McEwan Copy Share
It was always the view of my parents...that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people. — Ian Mcewan Copy Share
I apologize for being obvious, but every time I watch the curtain come down on even a halfway decent production of a Shakespeare play… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share
I would rather be physically disabled obviously than mentally. I would rather be paraplegic than nuts. And it is a terrifying prospect and actually… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share
I couldn't think about novels at all. It seemed the only writing that was appropriate to that horrendous event was journalism, reportage. And, in… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share
I did not kill my father, but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way. And but for the fact that it… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share
