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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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John Banville
Age: 78
Born: 1945
Born: December 8
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Benjamin Black
William John Banville
Asked
Greatest
Human
Humans
Would
Sentence
Sentences
Invention
Beings

More quotes by John Banville

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Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him.
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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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
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I am the worst judge of my books.
John Banville
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With the crime novels, its delightful to have protagonists I can revisit in book after book. Its like having a fictitious family.
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I don't own a Kindle, no. I love books, they are beautiful objects.
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The Booker Prize is a big, popular prize for big, popular books, and that's the way it should be.
John Banville
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Where I went, no one could follow. Yet someone managed to hold my hand.
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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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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
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I'm full of self-doubt. I doubt everything I do. Everything I do is a failure.
John Banville
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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.
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I live in Dublin, God knows why. There are greatly more congenial places I could have settled in - Italy, France, Manhattan - but I like the climate here, and Irish light seems to be essential for me and for my writing.
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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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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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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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
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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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Art is amoral, whether we accept this or not it does not take sides. The finest fictions are cold at heart.
John Banville
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I think I'm less the writer than I'm the written.
John Banville