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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.
John Banville
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John Banville
Age: 78
Born: 1945
Born: December 8
Journalist
Literary Critic
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Writer
Benjamin Black
William John Banville
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More quotes by John Banville
I think I'm less the writer than I'm the written.
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I shall strip away layer after layer of grime -- the toffee-colored varnish and caked soot left by a lifetime of dissembling -- until I come to the very thing itself and know it for what it is. My soul. My self.
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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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I never went to university. I'm self-educated. I didn't go because I was too impatient, too arrogant.
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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 am the worst judge of my books.
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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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The sentence is the greatest human invention of civilization.
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No two things the same, the equals sign a scandal.
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The secret of survival is a defective imagination.
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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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If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.
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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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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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...being alone with him was like being in a room which someone had just violently left
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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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In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.
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The Booker Prize is a big, popular prize for big, popular books, and that's the way it should be.
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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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Where I went, no one could follow. Yet someone managed to hold my hand.
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