Four or five years - nothing at all. But no one over thirty could understand this peculiarly weighted and condensed time, from late teens to early twenties, a stretch of life that needed a name, from school leaver to salaried professional, with a university and affairs and death and choices in between. I had forgotten how recent my childhood was, how long and inescapable it once seemed. How grown up and how unchanged I was.
Ian McewanReading groups, readings, breakdowns of book sales all tell the same story: when women stop reading, the novel will be dead.
Ian McewanThe cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.
Ian McewanBut to do its noticing and judging, poetry balances itself on the pinprick of the moment. Slowing down, stopping yourself completely, to read and understand a poem is like trying to acquire an old-fashioned skill.
Ian Mcewan