Ian McEwan

Award won Role or nomination

1. 1948 age 0

   Born

2. 2007 age 59

   CreditAtonementproducer

   CreditAtonementscreenwriter

• AAAlfie Allen1 title
• NANonso Anozie1 title
• TMTobias Menzies1 title
• DMDario Marianelli1 title
• SMSeamus McGarvey1 title
• KKKeira Knightley1 title
• BCBenedict Cumberbatch1 title
• EFElliot Francis1 title
• IBIan Bonar1 title
• HWHarriet Walter1 title

• Influenced by

  • SBSaul Bellow

Nothing recorded for: Spouse, Partner, Parents, Children, Siblings, Studied under, Taught.

• <p>Ian McEwan: I guess my starting point would be: the brain is responsible for consciousness, and we can be reasonably sure that when that brain ceases to be—when it falls apart and decomposes—that will be the end of us. From that, quite a lot of things follow, especially morally. We are the very privileged owners of a brief spark of consciousness, and we therefore have to take responsibility for it. We cannot rely, as Christians or Muslims do, on a world elsewhere, a paradise, to which one can work towards and maybe make sacrifices—and, crucially, make sacrifices of other people. We have a marvellous gift, and you see it develop in children, this ability to become aware that other people have minds just like your own and feelings that are just as important as your own, and this gift of empathy seems to me to be the building block of our moral system.</p><p>Richard Dawkins: I profoundly agree with you, and I've always felt that one of the things that is wrong with religion is that it

  Ian McEwan, CC BY-SA 4.0

• Now, I'm an atheist. I really don't believe for a moment that our moral sense comes from a God. … It's human, universal, [it's] being able to think our way into the minds of others. As I said at the time, what those holy fools clearly lacked, or clearly were able to deny themselves, was the ability to enter into the minds of the people they were being so cruel to. Amongst their crimes was a failure of the imagination, of the moral imagination.

  Ian McEwan, CC BY-SA 4.0

• We went to a club where singers and stand-up comedians performed in the hope of being discovered. A thin girl with bright red hair and sequined T-shirt reached the end of her passionately murmured song on a sudden shrill, impossible top note. All conversation ceased. Someone, perhaps maliciously, dropped a glass. Halfway through, the note became a warbling vibrato and the singer collapsed on the stage in an abject curtsy, arms held stiffly in front of her, fists clenched. Then she sprang to her tiptoes and held her arms high above her head with the palms flat as if to forestall the sporadic and indifferent applause."They all want to be Barbra Streisand or Liza Minnelli," George explained as he sucked a giant cocktail through a pink plastic straw. "But no one's looking for that kind of stuff anymore."

  Ian McEwan, CC BY-SA 4.0

• I did not kill my father, but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way.

  Ian McEwan, CC BY-SA 4.0

• He had once felt light on the ground. He used to think his life was an open-ended adventure, he used to give things away, it amused him when the unexpected happened, benevolent coincidences used to bear him along. When had all that stopped?

  Ian McEwan, CC BY-SA 4.0

• You want a picture of futility? It's a tunnel in the desert, from nowhere to nowhere, four hundred and fifty feet long.

  Ian McEwan, CC BY-SA 4.0