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I never went to university. I'm self-educated. I didn't go because I was too impatient, too arrogant.
John Banville
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John Banville
Age: 78
Born: 1945
Born: December 8
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Benjamin Black
William John Banville
Educated
University
Went
Didn
Self
Never
Impatient
Arrogant
More quotes by John Banville
I think I'm less the writer than I'm the written.
John Banville
The effect of prizes on one's career - if that is what to call it - is considerable, since they give one more clout with publishers and more notoriety among journalists. The effect on one's writing, however, is nil - otherwise, one would be in deep trouble.
John Banville
I read Nietzsche when I was a teenager and then I went back to reading him when I was in my thirties, and his voice spoke directly to me. Nietzsche is such a superb literary artist.
John Banville
I shall strip away layer after layer of grime -- the toffee-colored varnish and caked soot left by a lifetime of dissembling -- until I come to the very thing itself and know it for what it is. My soul. My self.
John Banville
The first thought that occurred to me, that night when I heard the chairman of the jury announce my name, was, Just think how many people hate me at this moment. Naturally, I wanted to annoy those people even further by being arrogant.
John Banville
The secret of survival is a defective imagination.
John Banville
All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.
John Banville
Sleep is uncanny, I have always found it so, a nightly dress-rehearsal for being dead.
John Banville
I dont 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, its very difficult to find.
John Banville
No two things the same, the equals sign a scandal.
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
I've always been fascinated by physics and cosmology. It gets more and more scary the older you get.
John Banville
The trouble with you, Vic, he said, is that you think of the world as a sort of huge museum with too many visitors allowed in.
John Banville
Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him.
John Banville
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
A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.
John Banville
Ian McEwan is a very good writer the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters.
John Banville
If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.
John Banville
...being alone with him was like being in a room which someone had just violently left
John Banville
All my life I have lied. I lied to escape, I lied to be loved, I lied for placement and power I lied to lie. It was a way of living lies are life's almost-anagram.
John Banville