Ian Mcewan Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?

  Ian Mcewan

  Writing, Imagination, Fancy

• At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.

  Ian Mcewan

  Writing, Stronger, Might

• It's good to get your hands dirty a bit and to test how you see things at a given point. And it's very pleasing after writing something like 'Atonement' or 'On Chesil Beach,' which are historical, to get involved in some plausible re-enactment of the here and now.

  Ian Mcewan

  Beach, Dirty, Writing

  "Ian McEwan: 'It's good to get your hands dirty a bit'" by Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. March 5, 2010.

• But how to do feelings? All very well to write "She felt sad", or describe what a sad person might do, but what of sadness itself, how was that put across so it could be felt in all its lowering immediacy? Even harder was the threat, or the confusion of feeling contradictory things.

  Ian Mcewan

  Sadness, Writing, Confusion

• In a story you only had to wish, you only had to write it down and you could have the world...It seemed so obvious now that it was too late: a story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it. Reading a sentence and understanding it were the same thing; as with the crooking of a finger, nothing lay between them. There was no gap during which the symbols were unraveled.

  Ian Mcewan

  Reading, Writing, Mean

• I'm quite good at not writing.

  Ian Mcewan

  Writing

  "The Background Hum". Interview with Daniel Zalewski, www.newyorker.com. February 23, 2009.

• 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.

  Ian Mcewan

  Writing, Men, Passivity Is

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

  Ian Mcewan

  Writing, Perfect, Dies

• When people ask, "Is there any advice you'd give a young writer?," I say write short stories. They afford lots of failure. Pastiche is a great way to start.

  Ian Mcewan

  Writing, People, Giving

  Ian McEwan, Ryan Roberts (2010). “Conversations with Ian McEwan”, Univ Pr of Mississippi

• 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

  Writing, People, Climate

  "Ian McEwan: 'It's good to get your hands dirty a bit'". Interview with Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. March 5, 2010.

• 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 fact, I think the profession rose quite honorably to the task. Novelists require a slower turnover, I mean, in time.

  Ian Mcewan

  Writing, Mean, Thinking

• Writing a novel resembles a journey with only the sketchiest of maps.

  Ian Mcewan

  Writing, Journey, Novel

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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