Author

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.

From 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.

From John Banville

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 book and run away with the plot and so on. But they don't exist.

From 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.

From 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.

From John Banville

With the crime novels, it's delightful to have protagonists I can revisit in book after book. It's like having a fictitious family.

From John Banville

With crime fiction, you have to write a half-dozen before they catch on.

From John Banville

When I say I don't like my own work, that doesn't mean it isn't better than everyone else's.

From John Banville

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

From 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.

From John Banville

John Banville

Notable Quotes

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