What reader wants to be told what attitude to strike? – Ian Mcewan
I think of novels in architectural terms. You have to enter at the gate, and this gate must be constructed in such a way that the reader has immediate confidence in the strength of the building. – Ian Mcewan
By concentrating on what is good in people, by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice, and by asking them to put their faith in the future, socialists put themselves at a severe disadvantage. – Ian Mcewan
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
When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep. Nay, and when I walk alone in a beautiful Orchard, if my Thoughts are some part of the Time taken up with strange Occurrences, I some part of the Time call them back again to my Walk, or to the Orchard, to the Sweetness of the Solitude, and to my self. – Michel de Montaigne, “Of Experience,” translated from French by Charles Cotton