We think we're living in the present, but we're really living in the past. — John Banville Copy Share Image
We're constantly losing - we're losing time, we're losing ourselves. I don't feel for the things I lost. — John Banville Copy Share Image
“Guilt is the only affect I know of that does not diminish with time. Nor does the guilty conscience have any sense… — John Banville Copy Share Image
Everything we do is tinged with the knowledge that this may be the last time that we will do this, and that… — John Banville Copy Share Image
For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an… — John Banville Copy Share Image
All novels must be autobiographical because I am the only material that I know. All of the characters are me. But at… — John Banville Copy Share Image
Why does the past seem so magical, so fraught, so luminous? At the time it was just, ugh, another boring bloody day.… — John Banville Copy Share Image
The first thought that occurred to me, that night when I heard the chairman of the jury announce my name, was, Just… — John Banville Copy Share Image
“Abruptly then it began to rain, I heard the swish of it behind me and turned in time to see it coming… — John Banville Copy Share Image
There are times, they occur with increasing frequency nowadays, when I seem to know nothing, when everything I know seems to have… — John Banville Copy Share Image
“Memory is imagination, and imagination is memory. I don’t think we remember the past, we imagine it. We take a few props… — John Banville Copy Share Image
“I have ever had the conviction, resistant to all rational considerations, that at some unspecified future moment the continuous rehearsal which is… — John Banville Copy Share Image
You will remember this when all else fades, this moment, here, together, by this well. There will be certain days, and certain… — John Banville Copy Share Image
“When I look back, no matter how hard I try I can see clear break between one phase and another. It is… — John Banville Copy Share Image
I've always been fascinated by physics and cosmology. It gets more and more scary the older you get. — John Banville Copy Share
“What did I brood on, sitting there in the classic pose with my elbows on my knees and my chin on my hands? We… — John Banville Copy Share
“Her own mother had died when Anna was twelve and since then father and daughter had faced the world like a pair of nineteenth-century… — John Banville Copy Share
The effect of prizes on one's career - if that is what to call it - is considerable, since they give one more clout… — John Banville Copy Share
“Of all the things we fashioned for them that they might be comforted, dawn is the one that works. When darkness sifts from the… — John Banville Copy Share
“Yet even without saying, each knew what the other was thinking, and, more acutely, what the other was feeling -- this is a further… — John Banville Copy Share
“I have ever had the conviction, resistant to all rational considerations, that at some unspecified future moment the continuous rehearsal which is my life,… — John Banville Copy Share
“The novel is a kind of elephant. But I like to make that elephant dance on a quarter.” — John Banville Copy Share
Art is amoral, whether we accept this or not; it does not take sides. The finest fictions are cold at heart. — John Banville Copy Share
“At thee seaside all is narrow horizontals, the world reduced to a few long straight lines pressed between earth and sky.” — John Banville Copy Share
“It seems to me a work of art is the evidence offered by a fantastically observant witness” — John Banville Copy Share
Everything we do is tinged with the knowledge that this may be the last time that we will do this, and that makes what… — John Banville Copy Share
I like ideas. I find them more exciting than human behavior for the most part. — John Banville Copy Share
