Quotes by John Banville

About John Banville:

William John Banville is an Irish novelist, adapter of dramas, and screenwriter. Recognised for his precise, cold, forensic prose style, Nabokovian inventiveness, and for the dark humour of his generally arch narrators, Banville is considered to be "one of the most imaginative literary novelists writing in the English language today." He has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov."
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I suppose it's possible that a writer would have feeling for his characters, but I can't see how, because writing is such a meticulous, intricate, technical business. I wish I could say that I love my characters and that frequently they take over the...

John Banville

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

John Banville

Doing what you do well is death. Your duty is to keep trying to do things that you don't do well, in the hope of learning.

John Banville

Death is such a strange thing. One minute you're here and then just gone. You'd think there would be an anteroom, a place where you could be visited before you go.

John Banville

When I started writing, I was a great rationalist and believed I was absolutely in control. But the older one gets, the more confused, and for an artist I think that is quite a good thing: you allow in more of your instinctual self; your dreams, fant...

John Banville

It's great people still care about books, and it's great you can still fashion a life from literature.

John Banville

I've been wrestling with Kafka since I was an adolescent. I think he's a great aphorist, a great letter writer, a great diarist, a great short story writer, and a great novelist - I'd put novelist last.

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

All novels must be autobiographical because I am the only material that I know. All of the characters are me. But at the same time, a novel is never autobiographical even if it describes the life of the author. Literary writing is a completely differ...

John Banville

Office life is very, very strange. It's like no other way of living. You have an intimacy with people who you work with in the office, yet if you meet them on the streets, you both look the other way because you're embarrassed.

John Banville

Life is tragic but it's equally comic.

John Banville

We artists love to talk tough, but we're just as sentimental as everyone else when it comes down to it.

John Banville

I don't own a Kindle, no. I love books, they are beautiful objects.

John Banville

We writers are shy, nocturnal creatures. Push us into the light and the light blinds us.

John Banville

Writers are just like other people, except slightly more obsessed.

John Banville

I never went to university. I'm self-educated. I didn't go because I was too impatient, too arrogant.

John Banville

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.

John Banville

I don't see how English as we use it in Europe can be revivified. It's like Latin must have been in about A.D. 300, tired and used up. All one can do is press very hard stylistically to make it glow.

John Banville

I'd given up Catholicism in my teens but something of it stays with me. I try to create the perfect sentence - that's as close to godliness as I can get.

John Banville

I sometimes think that I might be slightly autistic. There might be a syndrome that hasn't been named. I don't seem to see the world in the same way that most people I know see it. They don't seem to be baffled by it.

John Banville

I know some of my memories are made up and they are far more powerful than the things that actually happened. For example, I always remember my brother posting me a copy of 'Dubliners' from Africa, but he says he never did.

John Banville

Author Bio

  • NameJohn Banville
  • DescriptionIrish writer
  • AliasesBenjamin Black; William John Banville
  • BornDecember 8, 1945
  • CountryIreland
  • ProfessionScreenwriter; Novelist; Writer; Playwright
  • WorksThe Book Of Evidence; Ghosts; Eclipse; Shroud; The Sea; The Infinities; Ancient Light
  • AwardsAustrian State Prize For European Literature; James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Franz Kafka Prize; Prince Of Asturia Literary Prize