#si

Atheists have as much conscience, possibly more, than people with deep religious conviction, and they still have the same problem of how they reconcile themselves to a bad deed in the past. It's a little easier if you've got a god to forgive you. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#bad #conscience #conviction #deed #deep

I actually find novels that are determined to be funny at every turn quite oppressive. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#determined #every #find #funny #i

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

#atonement #beach #bit #dirty #get

One important theme is the extent to which one can ever correct an error, especially outside any frame of religious forgiveness. All of us have done something we regret - how we manage to remove that from our conscience, or whether that's even possible, interested me. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#conscience #correct #done #error #especially

Some people are tied to five hundred words a day, six days a week. I'm a hesitater. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#days #five #hundred #i #people

Something is missing in our culture. We can't quite celebrate the scientific literary tradition. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#culture #literary #missing #our #quite

Rock and roll doesn't necessarily mean a band. It doesn't mean a singer, and it doesn't mean a lyric, really. It's that question of trying to be immortal. ↗

— Malcolm Mclaren

#immortal #lyric #mean #necessarily #question

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

#controlled #declared #end #enter #even

The point of vision and desire are the same. ↗

— Wallace Stevens

#point #same #vision

Acting is a very personal process. It has to do with expressing your own personality, and discovering the character you're playing through your own experience - so we're all different. ↗

— Ian Mckellen

#character #different #discovering #experience #expressing