I've yet to meet somebody who said, 'Your stories are so revolting I couldn't read them.'
Interpretation
The quote highlights the subjective nature of storytelling and how it can engage readers regardless of content.
Ian McEwan's quote reflects the idea that storytelling promotes connection and fascination, suggesting that while individuals may have differing tastes, the impact of a compelling narrative is often undeniable. Rather than eliciting outright rejection based on unpleasant themes, well-crafted stories invite readers to experience diverse perspectives and emotions, revealing the power of literature to transcend boundaries.
In practice
In a talk about the importance of storytelling in literature classes, a teacher might use this quote to highlight how stories, regardless of their content, resonate with readers.
Watching him during the first several minutes of his delivery, Cecilia felt a pleasant sinking sensation in her stomach as she contemplated how deliciously self-destructive it would be, almost erotic, to be married to a man so nearly handsome, so hugely rich, so unfathomably stupid. He would fill her with his big-faced children, all of them loud, boneheaded boys with a passion for guns and football and aeroplanes.
My needs were simple I didn't bother much with themes or felicitous phrases and skipped fine descriptions of weather, landscapes and interiors. I wanted characters I could believe in, and I wanted to be made curious about what was to happen to them. Generally, I preferred people to be falling in and out of love, but I didn't mind so much if they tried their hand at something else. It was vulgar to want it, but I liked someone to say 'Marry me' by the end.
It marked the beginning and, of course, an end. At that moment a chapter, no, a whole stage of my closed. Had I known, and had there been a spare second or two, I might have allowed myself a little nostalgia.
There are ways in which art can have a longer reach than politics.
And now she was back in the world, not one she could make, but the one that had made her, and she felt herself shrinking under the early evening sky. She was weary of being outdoors, but she was not ready to go in. Was that really all there was in life, indoors or out? Wasn't there somewhere else for people to go?
Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.
No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
A lot of what making art is, is just being open, and empty. And putting yourself in the right place for things to, literally, come together.
People err who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to compositions as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not industriously studied through many times.
It is really so nice here-country-busy-busy with so many different kinds of things-... I must say I feel far away in another world here-... always we go to a new place...the people have a kind of gentleness that isn't usual on the mainland.
But even her demons she invested with inordinate beauty, consecrated them with the dignity of her attention.
I am trying to make art that relates to the deepest and most mythic concerns of human kind and I believe that, at this moment of history, feminism is humanism.
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