Ian Mcewan
Ian Mcewan
Ian Russell McEwan CBE FRSA FRSLis an English novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, The Times featured him on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth21 June 1948
gestures stories made
A story lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken
falling-in-love fall glances
...falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance.
growing-up memories children
For children, childhood is timeless. It is always the present. Everything is in the present tense. Of course, they have memories. Of course, time shifts a little for them and Christmas comes round in the end. But they don't feel it. Today is what they feel, and when they say 'When I grow up,' there is always an edge of disbelief - how could they ever be other than what they are?
compassion essence humanity
Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and the beginning of morality
views talking years
Twenty years ago I might have hired a professional listener, but somewhere along the way I had lost faith in the talking cure. A genteel fraud in my view.
atonement torn persons
A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.
identical
What is lawful is not always identical to what is right.
religious art simple
Finally he spoke the three simple words that no amount of bad art or bad faith can every quite cheapen. She repeated them, with exactly the same slight emphasis on the second word, as though she were the one to say them first. He had no religious belief, but it was impossible not to think of an invisible presence or witness in the room, and that these words spoken aloud were like signatures on an unseen contract.
dream cost littles
The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.
doing-nothing changed courses
This is how the entire course of a life can be changed: by doing nothing.
football children stupid
Watching him during the first several minutes of his delivery, Cecilia felt a pleasant sinking sensation in her stomach as she contemplated how deliciously self-destructive it would be, almost erotic, to be married to a man so nearly handsome, so hugely rich, so unfathomably stupid. He would fill her with his big-faced children, all of them loud, boneheaded boys with a passion for guns and football and aeroplanes.
diversion consequence being-wrong
When there are no consequences, being wrong is simply a diversion.
individuality novelists states
By measuring individual human worth, the novelist reveals the full enormity of the State
hands band variation
...beauty, she had discovered occupied a narrow band. Ugliness, on the hand, had infinite variation.