Ian Mcewan

“The best way to tell people about climate change is through non-fiction. There's a vast literature of outstanding writing on the subject.”

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

“I put it to you that there are no British poets, there are no British novelists. I have heard myself described as one, but I think really I'm an English novelist; there are Scottish poets an...”

“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...”

“One has to have the courage of one's pessimism.”

“Oh, I've become immune to the Booker. I think we need something a little more like the Pulitzer prize, where there isn't this great race.”

“My parents were keen for me to have the education they themselves never had. They weren't able to guide me towards particular books, but they encouraged me to read, which I did, randomly and...”

“I've yet to meet somebody who said, 'Your stories are so revolting I couldn't read them.'”

“The end of secrecy would be the end of the novel - especially the English novel. The English novel requires social secrecy, personal secrecy.”

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

“I apologize for being obvious, but every time I watch the curtain come down on even a halfway decent production of a Shakespeare play I feel a little sorrowful that I'll never know the man,...”

“At the risk of sounding like Virginia Woolf, I could live on £700 a year.”