Some people are tied to five hundred words a day, six days a week. I'm a hesitater. — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
Writers are said to have superstitions and little rituals. Readers have them too. — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
In my experience an appreciative letter from a fellow writer means a lot. — 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
“In a story you only had to wish, you only had to write it down and you could have the world.” — 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
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
When people ask, "Is there any advice you'd give a young writer?," I say write short stories. They afford lots of failure.… — Ian Mcewan Copy Share Image
Novelists have to be adept at controlling the flow of information, and, most crucially, they have to be in charge of the… — 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
A twenty-one-year-old writer is likely to be inhibited by a lack of usable experience. Childhood and adolescence were something I knew. — 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
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
I find it very difficult to talk about unwritten works. It's never useful to start putting words casually around the flimsiest of… — 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
“In the seventies I used to work in the bedroom of my flat at a little table. I worked in longhand with… — Ian McEwan Copy Share Image
“Reading was my way of not thinking about maths. More than that (or do I mean less?), it was my way of… — 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
“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
