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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
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Benjamin Black
William John Banville
People
Thought
Naturally
Wanted
Name
Annoy
Firsts
Heard
Announce
First
Names
Chairman
Many
Moment
Jury
Even
Hate
Occurred
Think
Moments
Arrogant
Thinking
Night
Annoying

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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.
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The secret of survival is a defective imagination.
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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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All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.
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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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Sleep is uncanny, I have always found it so, a nightly dress-rehearsal for being dead.
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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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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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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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Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him.
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With the crime novels, its delightful to have protagonists I can revisit in book after book. Its like having a fictitious family.
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I am the worst judge of my books.
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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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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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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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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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No two things the same, the equals sign a scandal.
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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 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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