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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
Written
Less
Think
Thinking
Writer

More quotes by John Banville

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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
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The sentence is the greatest human invention of civilization.
John Banville
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Dostoevsky is such a bad writer it is hard to take him seriously as a novelist, though he is a wonderful philosopher.
John Banville
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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
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All I wanted was to be left alone. They abhor a vacuum, other people. You find a quiet corner where you can hunker down in peace, and the next minute there they are, crowding around you in their party hats, tooting their paper whistles in your face and insisting you get up and join in the knees-up.
John Banville
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I am the worst judge of my books.
John Banville
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The secret of survival is a defective imagination.
John Banville
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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
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Ian McEwan is a very good writer the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters.
John Banville
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If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.
John Banville
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We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.
John Banville
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Life is tragic but it's equally comic.
John Banville
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I've always been fascinated by physics and cosmology. It gets more and more scary the older you get.
John Banville
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Where I went, no one could follow. Yet someone managed to hold my hand.
John Banville
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No two things the same, the equals sign a scandal.
John Banville
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All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.
John Banville
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A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.
John Banville
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We think we're living in the present, but we're really living in the past.
John Banville
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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
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I don't own a Kindle, no. I love books, they are beautiful objects.
John Banville