John Banville Quotes

born 1945 Ireland

John Banville (born 8 December 1945) is an Irish novelist and journalist. He is recognised for his precise, cold, forensic prose style, Nabokovian inventiveness, and for the dark humour of his generally arch narrators.

Ireland
Journalists
Novelists

Random John Banville quote

48 quotes

Come, Benjamin, put your arm around me and we shall be comfortably one, mon semblable—mon frère!

John Banville on the birth of his dark twin, Benjamin Black (2011)

There is something slightly sinister about Prague, just as there is about Lyon and Turin.

John Banville: Using words to paint pictures of "magical" Prague (2006)

We all yearn in our hearts to be Larkin's "shit in the shuttered chateau", but few of us achieve that grand apotheosis.

Writers' rooms: John Banville (2007)

I'm a little older now and I think I've lightened up a bit as I'm getting older.

John Banville: claiming Kafka as an Irish writer (2011)

I like to hide in Ireland, but I like to think of myself as an internal exile.

John Banville: claiming Kafka as an Irish writer (2011)

Every novelist knows – perhaps everyone knows who has written even a letter, or a page of a diary – that the process of composition involves two separate sensibilities.

John Banville on the birth of his dark twin, Benjamin Black (2011)

I'm a little surprised that commercial success has arrived. I used to think that it was hopeless, that it would never happen.

Once More Admired Than Bought, A Writer Finally Basks in Success (1990)

Oh, I'm terribly ignorant of Czech literature. It's disgraceful really.

John Banville: Using words to paint pictures of "magical" Prague (2006)

Coming from a tiny island, it's very exciting to be at sea in Central Europe in the sense of vast stretches of land all around one. We don't get that in Ireland.

John Banville: claiming Kafka as an Irish writer (2011)

I'm very much against the notion of the Great Man, the Great Figure who is telling us all how to behave. Writers are just like other people, except slightly more obsessed.

Certain moments remain in the mind with such force and clearness that one suspects they must be invented; that they are not held in the memory but generated out of the imagination.

John Banville on the birth of his dark twin, Benjamin Black (2011)

I suppose many people in Ireland would regard me as being more a European writer than an Irish writer. I don't think this is so.

John Banville: claiming Kafka as an Irish writer (2011)

I'm doing my best to not be too rude about it, but oh my God that Czech food...

John Banville: Using words to paint pictures of "magical" Prague (2006)

I always remember how a novel written by John Braine in the 1950s about working-class life in England, which was called Room at the Top, which was translated into Swedish as The Attic!

John Banville: Using words to paint pictures of "magical" Prague (2006)

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

I have tried to explain to her that the concept of bravery is entirely spurious. We are what we are, we do what we do.

The Untouchable (1997)

When young writers approach me for advice, I remind them, as gently as I can, that they are on their own, with no help available anywhere.

How I Write: John Banville on ‘Ancient Light,’ Nabokov, and Dublin (2012)

All art is to some extent shaped by what has gone before. But that is an organic process, not a conscious intention. Novels are made out of novels as much as they are out of life.

Fully Booked: Q & A with John Banville (2012)

I don't see why the young in Prague or Budapest or Warsaw shouldn't be allowed to go to hell in a handcart if they want to. They do it everywhere else and they have great fun doing so.

John Banville: Using words to paint pictures of "magical" Prague (2006)

Ah, what heights of contempt I was capable of in those days! Now, in old age, I have largely lost that faculty, and I miss it, for it was passion of a sort.

The Untouchable (1997)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John Banville (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.