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And indeed nothing had happened, a momentous nothing, just another of the great world's shrugs of indifference.

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
Indifference
Indeed
Happened
Another
Nothing
Great
World
Shrugs
Momentous

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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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I've always been fascinated by physics and cosmology. It gets more and more scary the older you get.
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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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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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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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All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.
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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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...being alone with him was like being in a room which someone had just violently left
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No two things the same, the equals sign a scandal.
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We think we're living in the present, but we're really living in the past.
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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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If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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