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John Banville Quotes


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Quotes by John Banville

Showing 1-10 of 55 Quotes by John Banville

I don't know if there is a personal identity. We all imagine that we are absolute individuals. But when we begin to look for where this individuality resides, it's very difficult to find.

~John Banville

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We writers are shy, nocturnal creatures. Push us into the light and the light blinds us.

~John Banville

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I suppose it's possible that a writer would have feeling for his characters, but I can't see how, because writing is such a meticulous, intricate, technical business. I wish I could say that I love my characters and that frequently they take over the book and run away with the plot and so on. But they don't exist.

~John Banville

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How I envy writers who can work on aeroplanes or in hotel rooms. On the run I can produce an article or a book review, or even a film script, but for fiction I must have my own desk, my own wall with my own postcards pinned to it, and my own window not to look out of.

~John Banville

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We think we're living in the present, but we're really living in the past.

~John Banville

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Why does the past seem so magical, so fraught, so luminous? At the time it was just, ugh, another boring bloody day. But, to look back on, it's a day full of miracles and light and extraordinary events. Why is this? What process do we apply to the past, to give it this vividness? I don't know.

~John Banville

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I've always been fascinated by physics and cosmology. It gets more and more scary the older you get.

~John Banville

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It's great people still care about books, and it's great you can still fashion a life from literature.

~John Banville

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Writers are just like other people, except slightly more obsessed.

~John Banville

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When I started writing, I was a great rationalist and believed I was absolutely in control. But the older one gets, the more confused, and for an artist I think that is quite a good thing: you allow in more of your instinctual self; your dreams, fantasies and memories. It's richer, in a way.

~John Banville

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Biography

Nationality: Irish

Type: Novelist

Born: December 8th, 1945

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