A Quote by Ian Mcewan

I watched our friends' wary, intelligent faces droop at our tale. Their shock was a mere shadow of our own, resembling more the goodwilled imitation of that emotion, and for this reason it was a temptation to exaggerate, to throw a rope of superlatives across the abyss that divided experience from its representation by anecdote.

Ian Mcewan

Quote Topics

Abyss Across Anecdote Divided Emotion Exaggerate Experience Faces Friends Imitation Intelligent Mere More Our Own Reason Representation Rope Shadow Shock Superlatives Tale Temptation Throw Wary Watched

Quote Author

Ian Mcewan
British - Novelist
Born: June 21, 1948

So we make stories of our own, in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker, hoping that we'll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born.

Clive Barker

Many agricultural counties are far more important in the life of the State than their population bears to the entire population of the State. It is for this reason that I have never been in favor of restricting their representation in our State Senate to a strictly population basis. It is the same reason that the founding fathers of our country gave balanced representation to the States of the Union, equal representation in one House and proportionate representation based upon population in the other.

Earl Warren

If our friends' idealizations of us need the corrective of our own experience, it may be true also that our own sordid view of our lives needs the corrective of our friends' idealizations.

Oscar W. Firkins

When we exaggerate our friends' tenderness towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own virtue.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

For me, it's important to experience aesthetic shock, which sets in motion our imagination, our emotions, our feelings, and our thoughts. That's the purpose of a painting and of art in general.

Pierre Soulages

I am a man, and men are animals who tell stories. This is a gift from God, who spoke our species into being, but left the end of our story untold. That mystery is troubling to us. How could it be otherwise? Without the final part, we think, how are we to make sense of all that went before: which is to say, our lives? So we make stories of our own, in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker, hoping that we'll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born.

Clive Barker

I exaggerate all our selves, our beings. I make fun of everything: of our life and what we are. But I don't tell jokes, really. I just exaggerate life, and it comes out funny.

Don Rickles

Our behavior is a function of our experience. We act according to the way we see things. If our experience is destroyed, our behavior will be destructive. If our experience is destroyed, we have lost our own selves.

R. D. Laing

Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion. Our brains merely register and act upon what is telegraphed to them by our bodily experience. Intellect is to emotion as our clothes are to our bodies; we could not very well have civilized life without clothes, but we would be in a poor way if we had only clothes without bodies.

Alfred North Whitehead

Recognize that the great majority of us aren't trained actors and entertainers. Usually, it's not our faces, our bodies, our personas or our stage presence that sells our books. It's our stories, our visions and our voices.

M. J. Rose

Perhaps that is our doom, our human curse, to never really know one another. We erect edifices in our minds about the flimsy framework of word and deed, mere totems of the true person, who, like the gods to whom the temples were built, remains hidden. We understand our own construct; we know our own theory; we love our own fabrication. Still . . . does the artifice of our affection make our love any less real?

Rick Yancey

I hope we see more avenues for representation. More TV shows and films starring queer people, especially QPOC and nonbinary folks, more mainstream press coverage of our artwork and fashion, and more representation of our interests within politics.

Sasha Velour

In our own country, we have seen America pay a terrible price for any form of discrimination, and we have seen us grow stronger as we have steadily let more and more of our hatreds and our fears go. As we have given more and more of our people the chance to live their dreams. That is why the flame of our Statue of Liberty, like the Olympic flame carried all across America by thousands of citizen heroes will always burn brighter than the flames that burn our churches, our synagogues, our mosques.

William J. Clinton

Over and over, we start our own tales, compose our own stories, whether our lives are short or long. Until at last all our beginnings come down to just one end, and the tale of who we are is done.

Cameron Dokey

It is impossible to exaggerate the wide, and widening, gulf between the American attitude on the Iraq war and the view from our friends across the Atlantic.

Nick Clooney

America's greatness is due in no small measure to our system of government, in which power and authority are deliberately divided. The separation of powers is not a mere "technicality." It is the centerpiece of our Constitution. Our freedoms depend upon it in the future, just as they have in the past.

Richard Allen Epstein

A Quote by Ian Mcewan

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