John Banville - Ancient Light (2012)

7 Sourced Quotes

View all John Banville Quotes
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.

John Banville
I write in what we call Hiberno-English, and it would be disastrous to lose my literary accent, as both Joyce and Beckett began to do in exile. In their case the unique tone of voice they each unwittingly adopted only made for a deeper poetic intensity; I suspect if I were to undergo a similar loss the result would not be so productive.

John Banville
Interviewer: What would you like carved onto your tombstone?
Banville: I'd rather not have a tombstone.

John Banville
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.

John Banville
I drive from home to my office, a small apartment on the river in the center of Dublin. I write there from 9 a. m. to lunchtime, I take a simple lunch—bread, cheese, nice cup of tea—work until 6 p. m., then home for dinner. Viewed from outside my head it is a singularly dull and uneventful day, but inside my head … aaah.

John Banville
Every artist has a Dorian Gray slaving away in the attic.

John Banville
Sleep is uncanny, I have always found it so, a nightly dress-rehearsal for being dead.

John Banville