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Books Quote by Ian Mcewan

“You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan.” quote by Ian Mcewan — Download Open image

“You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan.”

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Books Controlled Intention Interesting Justify Might Passivity Relax Satan

More by Ian Mcewan

“As you will see, we do not believe that artists have an obligation to strike up attitudes to the war. Indeed, they are wise and right to ignore it and devote themselves to other subjects. Since artists are politically impotent, they must use this time to develop at deeper emotional levels. Your work, your war work, is to cultivate your…

You could say that all novels are spy novels and all novelists are spy masters.

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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.

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“It is shaming sometimes, how the body will not, or cannot, lie about emotions.”

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“While my friends struggled and calculated, I reached a solution by a set of floating steps that were partly visual, partly just a feeling…

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“Once, on a walk by a river- Eskdale in low reddish sunlight, with a dusting of snow- his daughter quoted to him an opening verse by her favourite poet. Apparently, not many young women loved Phillip Larkin the way she did. 'If I were to construct a religion/ I should make use of water.' She said she liked the laconic…

“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, as daisy says, like a Jane Austen novel. When player and listener together know the route so well, the pleasure is in the deviation, the unexpected turn against the grain. To see a world in a…

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…

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“On Chesil Beach he could have called out to Florence, he could have gone after her. He did not know, or would not have cared to know, that as she ran away from him, certain in her distress that she was about to lose him, she had never loved him more, or more hopelessly, and that the sound of his…

It was always the view of my parents...that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people.

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I apologize for being obvious, but every time I watch the curtain come down on even a halfway decent production of a Shakespeare play…

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I would rather be physically disabled obviously than mentally. I would rather be paraplegic than nuts. And it is a terrifying prospect and actually the longer we live the more likely it is that that's how we will go and that's a very painful thing to contemplate.

Explore all 496 Ian Mcewan quotes

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I think a new world will arise out of the religious mists when we approach our Bible with the idea that it is not…

Aiden Wilson Tozer

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If I had a dollar for every time I couldn’t sleep, I could buy a billion locks and finally read a book in peace.

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If what I write is literature, I guess you'd better emphasize the 'litter.'

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My sentences got sharper and my stories more efficient, and I gradually learned to imagine the reader more clearly and to empathize with that…

Karen Thompson Walker

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Young men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend “a course of reading.” Distrust a course of reading! People who…

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“Within the pages of books, I've journeyed to Mandalay, the Milky Way and Santa Fe, without once having to leave my armchair.”

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The Rosary is the book of the blind.

Fulton J. Sheen

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“Tacitus did not write a most dangerous book. His readers made it so.”

Christopher K. Krebs

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“Take some books and read; that’s an immense help; and books are always good company if you have the right sort.”

Louisa May Alcott

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Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine, aspire to any character but that of a wit.

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I have many who keep me going, I am very fortunate in this sense. There is nothing like a child who knows more about…

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I think books in which people are really happy and things are going well are probably the most challenging novels there are to write,…

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