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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: 79
Born: 1945
Born: December 8
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Benjamin Black
William John Banville
Momentous
Indifference
Indeed
Happened
Another
Nothing
Great
World
Shrugs

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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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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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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 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've always been fascinated by physics and cosmology. It gets more and more scary the older you get.
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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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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.
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I never went to university. I'm self-educated. I didn't go because I was too impatient, too arrogant.
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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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I'm full of self-doubt. I doubt everything I do. Everything I do is a failure.
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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 think I'm less the writer than I'm the written.
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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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All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.
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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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No two things the same, the equals sign a scandal.
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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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