I was in Miami, reading at the book fair. My partner on the platform had won the Pulitzer Prize the previous day. At the book signing afterwards, Pulitzer Man had waiting for him a queue of admiring readers that stretched up the spine of Florida, while I had three people — an academic who was writing something on my work, the usual maniac in a raincoat, and a kindly chap who leaned down and said to me in a confidential whisper, I'm not going to buy your book, but you looked so lonely I felt I had to come and talk to you.

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