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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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John Banville
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: December 8
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Benjamin Black
William John Banville
Depends
Others
Nothing
Much
Men
Depend
Integrity

More quotes by 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.
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The sentence is the greatest human invention of civilization.
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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.
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We think we're living in the present, but we're really living in the past.
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...being alone with him was like being in a room which someone had just violently left
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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.
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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.
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No two things the same, the equals sign a scandal.
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And indeed nothing had happened, a momentous nothing, just another of the great world's shrugs of indifference.
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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 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.
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The secret of survival is a defective imagination.
John Banville
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All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.
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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.
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I am the worst judge of my books.
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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.
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Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him.
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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.
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Life is tragic but it's equally comic.
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I'm full of self-doubt. I doubt everything I do. Everything I do is a failure.
John Banville