Quote

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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John Banville
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: December 8
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Benjamin Black
William John Banville
Character
Killed
Writing
Flesh
Made
Easily
Characters
Exercise
Free
Words
Volition
Born
Fictional

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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The secret of survival is a defective imagination.
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All my life I have lied. I lied to escape, I lied to be loved, I lied for placement and power I lied to lie. It was a way of living lies are life's almost-anagram.
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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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Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him.
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I've always been fascinated by physics and cosmology. It gets more and more scary the older you get.
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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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In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.
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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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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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No two things the same, the equals sign a scandal.
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...being alone with him was like being in a room which someone had just violently left
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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 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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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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And indeed nothing had happened, a momentous nothing, just another of the great world's shrugs of indifference.
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I don't own a Kindle, no. I love books, they are beautiful objects.
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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.
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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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