Quote

Life is tragic but it's equally comic.

John Banville

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Banville
Age: 78
Born: 1945
Born: December 8
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Benjamin Black
William John Banville
Tragic
Comic
Life
Equally

More quotes by John Banville

Image
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
Image
The secret of survival is a defective imagination.
John Banville
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Dostoevsky is such a bad writer it is hard to take him seriously as a novelist, though he is a wonderful philosopher.
John Banville
Image
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
Image
I am the worst judge of my books.
John Banville
Image
With the crime novels, its delightful to have protagonists I can revisit in book after book. Its like having a fictitious family.
John Banville
Image
Ian McEwan is a very good writer the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters.
John Banville
Image
Sleep is uncanny, I have always found it so, a nightly dress-rehearsal for being dead.
John Banville
Image
Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him.
John Banville
Image
I'm full of self-doubt. I doubt everything I do. Everything I do is a failure.
John Banville
Image
All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.
John Banville
Image
A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.
John Banville
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
...being alone with him was like being in a room which someone had just violently left
John Banville
Image
Where I went, no one could follow. Yet someone managed to hold my hand.
John Banville