Writing keeps me at my desk, constantly trying to write a perfect sentence. It is a great privilege to make one’s living from writing sentences. The sentence is the greatest invention of civilization. To sit all day long assembling these… — John Banville Copy Share Image
I'd given up Catholicism in my teens but something of it stays with me. I try to create the perfect sentence - that's as close to godliness as I can get. — 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
