In the city of flesh I travel without maps, a worried tourist: and Ottilie was a very Venice. I stumbled lost in the blue shade of her pavements. Here was a dreamy stillness, a swaying, the splash of an oar.… — John Banville Copy Share Image
Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off. — 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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“The novel is a kind of elephant. But I like to make that elephant dance on a quarter.” — John Banville Copy Share Image
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 Image
“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 Image
