Ian McEwan

“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves, Confucius said.”

— Ian McEwan

A story lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken

— Ian Mcewan

In my experience an appreciative letter from a fellow writer means a lot.

— Ian Mcewan

“Writers owed their readers a duty of care, of mercy.”

— Ian McEwan

“What a stroke of luck, that the woman he loves is also his wife.”

— Ian McEwan

The luxury of being half-asleep, exploring the fringes of psychosis in safety.

— Ian Mcewan

“The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return”

— Ian McEwan

“Words, as I'm beginning to appreciate, can make things true.”

— Ian McEwan

When they kissed she immediately felt his tongue, tensed and strong, pushing past her teeth, like some bully shouldering his way into…

— Ian Mcewan

“But this inglorious revolution wasn't for me. I didn't want a sex shop in every town.”

— Ian McEwan

“The very word 'history' conjured a dull success of thrones and murderous clerical wrangling.”

— Ian McEwan

She returned his gaze, struck by the sense of her own transformation, and overwhelmed by the beauty which a lifetime havit had…

— Ian Mcewan

“I said I didn’t like tricks, I liked life as I knew it recreated on the page. He said it wasn’t possible…

— Ian McEwan

“He knew from long experience that a letter sent in fury merely put a weapon into the hands of your enemy”

— Ian McEwan

It is shaming sometimes how the body will not, or cannot, lie about emotions. Who, for decorum’s sake, has ever slowed his…

— Ian Mcewan

You can spin stories out of the ways people understand and misunderstand each other.

— Ian Mcewan

There's a taste in the air, sweet and vaguely antiseptic, that reminds him of his teenage years in these streets, and of…

— Ian Mcewan

But how to do feelings? All very well to write "She felt sad", or describe what a sad person might do, but…

— Ian Mcewan

“Each day he made attempts … but produced nothing but quotations, thinly or well disguised, of his own work. Nothing sprang free…

— Ian McEwan

“My needs were simple. I didn't bother much with themes or felicitous phrases and skipped fine descriptions of weather, landscapes and interiors.…

— Ian McEwan

My biggest fear, I think falling from a great height. If I want to keep myself awake at night I imagine I'm…

— Ian Mcewan

When I began I thought that literature was contained within a bubble that somehow floated above the world commented upon by newspapers.…

— Ian Mcewan

In the first half of the 20th Century, we lived through human disasters on a scale unimaginable. The Holocaust was once suggested…

— Ian Mcewan

In a language as idiomatically stressed as English, opportunities for misreadings are bound to arise. By a mere backward movement of stress,…

— Ian Mcewan

“Florence realised she had stumbled across an empty truth, self-evident enough in retrospect, as primal and ancient as danegeld or droit du…

— Ian McEwan

In a story you only had to wish, you only had to write it down and you could have the world...It seemed…

— Ian Mcewan

“The following day the editor presided over a sudued meeting with his senior staff. Tony Montano sat to one side, a silent…

— Ian McEwan

She wanted to leave, she wanted to lie alone face down on her bed and savor the vile piquancy of the moment,…

— Ian Mcewan

“Certain artists in print or paint flourish, like babies-to-be, in confined spaces. Their narrow subjects may confound or disappoint some. Courtship among…

— Ian McEwan

“Initially, a simple phrase chased round and round in Cecilia's thoughts: Of course, of course. How had she not seen it? Everything…

— Ian McEwan

“Henry liked to put to himself when he was a schoolboy: what are the chances of this particular fish, from that shoal,…

— Ian McEwan

She bent her finger and then straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not…

— Ian Mcewan

This is how the entire course of a life can be changed: by doing nothing.

— Ian Mcewan

If I could write the perfect novella I would die happy.

— Ian Mcewan

Be wary of too much calm, particularly in your mid-fifties.

— Ian Mcewan

He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit.

— Ian Mcewan

And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.

— Ian Mcewan

“All that's really required is that anything the state does in relation to the arts is laid on the table where we…

— Ian McEwan

“God's love may take the form of wrath. It can show itself to us as a calamity. This is the difficult lesson…

— Ian McEwan

The evasions of her little novel were exactly those of her life. Everything she did not wish to confront was also missing…

— Ian Mcewan