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I think I'm less the writer than I'm the written.
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
Writer
Written
Less
Think
Thinking
More quotes by 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
Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him.
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
Doing what you do well is death. Your duty is to keep trying to do things that you don't do well, in the hope of learning.
John Banville
Everything we do is tinged with the knowledge that this may be the last time that we will do this, and that makes what we're doing incredibly sweet.
John Banville
The sentence is the greatest human invention of civilization.
John Banville
If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.
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
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
Dostoevsky is such a bad writer it is hard to take him seriously as a novelist, though he is a wonderful philosopher.
John Banville
I never went to university. I'm self-educated. I didn't go because I was too impatient, too arrogant.
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
A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.
John Banville
All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.
John Banville
The secret of survival is a defective imagination.
John Banville
And indeed nothing had happened, a momentous nothing, just another of the great world's shrugs of indifference.
John Banville
I'm full of self-doubt. I doubt everything I do. Everything I do is a failure.
John Banville
There are times, they occur with increasing frequency nowadays, when I seem to know nothing, when everything I know seems to have fallen out of my mind like a shower of rain, and I am gripped for a moment in paralysed dismay, waiting for it all to come back but with no certainty that it will.
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
I don't own a Kindle, no. I love books, they are beautiful objects.
John Banville