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John Banville Quotes

Irish - Novelist | December 8, 1945 -

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.

Love Business Writing Book Wish Run

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.

Tired Glow Hard See Europe Up

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.

Great Story Think Short Wrestling

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

You Crime Write Fiction Catch

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

Work Better Say My Own Mean Own

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

Love Beautiful Own Books Objects

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.

Death Think You Place Go Strange

When you're writing there's a deep, deep level of concentration way below your normal self. This strange voice, these strange sentences come out of you.

Writing Voice Deep Self You Strange

I'd given up Catholicism in my teens but something of it stays with me. I try to create the perfect sentence - that's as close to godliness as I can get.

Me Perfect I Can Create Try Up

I'm a hopeless 19th-century romantic.

Romantic Hopeless 19th-Century

I sometimes think that I might be slightly autistic. There might be a syndrome that hasn't been named. I don't seem to see the world in the same way that most people I know see it. They don't seem to be baffled by it.

People World Think Know Sometimes

I know some of my memories are made up and they are far more powerful than the things that actually happened. For example, I always remember my brother posting me a copy of 'Dubliners' from Africa, but he says he never did.

Memories Brother Me Powerful Copy

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