John Banville

“At thee seaside all is narrow horizontals, the world reduced to a few long straight lines pressed between earth and sky.”

— John Banville

The white May blossom swooned slowly into the open mouth of the grave.

— John Banville

Dostoevsky is such a bad writer it is hard to take him seriously as a novelist, though he is a wonderful philosopher.

— John Banville

Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it.

— John Banville

With the crime novels, it's delightful to have protagonists I can revisit in book after book. It's like having a fictitious family.

— John Banville

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

— John Banville

I don't own a Kindle, no. I love books, they are beautiful objects.

— John Banville

“Of the things we fashioned for them that they might be comforted, dawn is the one that works.”

— John Banville

Most crime fiction, no matter how 'hard-boiled' or bloodily forensic, is essentially sentimental, for most crime writers are disappointed romantics.

— John Banville

My work is frequently described as cold, which is baffling, since it seems to me embarrassingly, shame-makingly, scandalously warm. I find my…

— John Banville

When young writers approach me for advice, I remind them, as gently as I can, that they are on their own, with…

— John Banville

“The common people?—pah. What are they to us? You and I, mein Freund, we are lords of the earth, the great ones,…

— John Banville

You know, artists don't really have all that much experience of life. We make a huge amount out of the small experience…

— John Banville

When I finish a sentence, after much labor, it's finished. A certain point comes at which you can't do any more work…

— John Banville

Office life is very, very strange. It's like no other way of living. You have an intimacy with people who you work…

— John Banville

Dogs are dim creatures, do not speak to me of their good sense--have you ever heard of a team of tomcats hauling…

— John Banville

“When I look back all is flux, without beginning and flowing towards no end, or none that I shall experience, except as…

— John Banville

Writing keeps me at my desk, constantly trying to write a perfect sentence. It is a great privilege to make one’s living…

— John Banville

How I envy writers who can work on aeroplanes or in hotel rooms. On the run I can produce an article or…

— John Banville

There are times, they occur with increasing frequency nowadays, when I seem to know nothing, when everything I know seems to have…

— John Banville

“Adam senses a large weariness in him, the weariness of an old actor in the middle of a long run in an…

— John Banville

Art is amoral, whether we accept this or not; it does not take sides. The finest fictions are cold at heart.

— John Banville

Death is such a strange thing. One minute you're here and then just gone. You'd think there would be an anteroom, a…

— John Banville

I shall strip away layer after layer of grime -- the toffee-colored varnish and caked soot left by a lifetime of dissembling…

— John Banville

“Yet even without saying, each knew what the other was thinking, and, more acutely, what the other was feeling -- this is…

— John Banville

“What did I brood on, sitting there in the classic pose with my elbows on my knees and my chin on my…

— John Banville

“Abruptly then it began to rain, I heard the swish of it behind me and turned in time to see it coming…

— John Banville

I dont know if there is a personal identity. We all imagine that we are absolute individuals. But when we begin to…

— John Banville

“I would have made her a part of me. If I could, I would have had a notch cut in my already…

— John Banville

I've been wrestling with Kafka since I was an adolescent. I think he's a great aphorist, a great letter writer, a great…

— John Banville

Poetry is that magic which consists in awakening sensations with the help of a combination of sounds ... that sorcery by which…

— John Banville

I had never liked, even feared a little, this wild reach of marsh and mud flats where everything seemed turned away from…

— 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…

— John Banville

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an…

— John Banville

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily…

— John Banville

I read Nietzsche when I was a teenager and then I went back to reading him when I was in my thirties,…

— John Banville

“There is something about gin, the tang in it of the deep wildwood, perhaps, that always makes me think of twilight and…

— John Banville

I sometimes think that I might be slightly autistic. There might be a syndrome that hasn't been named. I don't seem to…

— John Banville