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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
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Benjamin Black
William John Banville
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More quotes by John Banville
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.
John Banville
There are times, they occur with increasing frequency nowadays, when I seem to know nothing, when everything I know seems to have fallen out of my mind like a shower of rain, and I am gripped for a moment in paralysed dismay, waiting for it all to come back but with no certainty that it will.
John Banville
No two things the same, the equals sign a scandal.
John Banville
The secret of survival is a defective imagination.
John Banville
The sentence is the greatest human invention of civilization.
John Banville
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.
John Banville
Dostoevsky is such a bad writer it is hard to take him seriously as a novelist, though he is a wonderful philosopher.
John Banville
Sleep is uncanny, I have always found it so, a nightly dress-rehearsal for being dead.
John Banville
A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.
John Banville
Art is amoral, whether we accept this or not it does not take sides. The finest fictions are cold at heart.
John Banville
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.
John Banville
Ian McEwan is a very good writer the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters.
John Banville
I am the worst judge of my books.
John Banville
We think we're living in the present, but we're really living in the past.
John Banville
With the crime novels, its delightful to have protagonists I can revisit in book after book. Its like having a fictitious family.
John Banville
I've always been fascinated by physics and cosmology. It gets more and more scary the older you get.
John Banville
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.
John Banville
Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him.
John Banville
The Booker Prize is a big, popular prize for big, popular books, and that's the way it should be.
John Banville
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