48 quotes
As a boy I was very solitary but blissfully happy. We lived on the edge of town in Wexford and I wandered the fields with my dog, declaiming Keats to the trees.
John Banville: Who cares whodunnit? (2013)
If you think I'm being bleak, I'm not. It's wonderful to be making yourself up. That's what makes life so exciting. It's an unending adventure.
John Banville: Who cares whodunnit? (2013)
I suppose this is peasant food. You know, the workers in the fields needed these heavy dumplings and things to eat, but God don't offer them to me...
John Banville: Using words to paint pictures of "magical" Prague (2006)
After all, who knows what the distant past was like? About Kepler and Copernicus, people often say, You captured the period so well! I always want to ask, How do you know? You weren't there either.
John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)
Saramago is … interesting, but I don't think I would put it higher than that … [he] ventures too far into the realm of 'magic realism' for my taste. Reality itself is magical enough without inventing whimsicalities.
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, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)
I'm also lumbered with the title of being a writer's writer, which is the worst possible reputation you can have, because, of course, other writers don't read other writers except to gain evidence against them. And it puts readers off.
John Banville: claiming Kafka as an Irish writer (2011)
I could have kept [writing "Irish" novels such as Birchwood] and probably had a good deal more success than I did, especially on this side of the Atlantic. But you have to try to do many things. You have to try to do things that you actually think you're incapable of.
Once More Admired Than Bought, A Writer Finally Basks in Success (1990)