Happiness was different in childhood. It was so much then a matter simply of accumulation, of taking things - new experiences, new emotions - and applying them like so many polished tiles to what would someday be the marvellously finished pavilion of the self.

John Banville

Categorized in : Self New Experiences Childhood

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

John Banville

exercise writing character

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

John Banville

beats heart past

There are times, they occur with increasing frequency nowadays, when I seem to know nothing, when everything I know seems to have fallen out of my mind like a shower of rain, and I am gripped for a moment in paralysed dismay, waiting for it all to come back but with no certainty that it will.

John Banville

waiting mind rain

Everything we do is tinged with the knowledge that this may be the last time that we will do this, and that makes what we're doing incredibly sweet.

John Banville

lasts may sweet

In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.

John Banville

self writing order

Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him.

John Banville

would-be believe world

All my life I have lied. I lied to escape, I lied to be loved, I lied for placement and power; I lied to lie. It was a way of living; lies are life's almost-anagram.

John Banville

lied lying way

A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.

John Banville

depends integrity men

To take possession of a city of which you are not a native you must first fall in love there.

John Banville

falling-in-love cities firsts

We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.

John Banville

life-goes-on generations littles

If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.

John Banville

sentences invention humans

And indeed nothing had happened, a momentous nothing, just another of the great world's shrugs of indifference.

John Banville

happened indifference world

Writing keeps me at my desk, constantly trying to write a perfect sentence. It is a great privilege to make one's living from writing sentences. The sentence is the greatest invention of civilization. To sit all day long assembling these extraordinary strings of words is a marvelous thing. I couldn't ask for anything better. It's as near to godliness as I can get.

John Banville

writing civilization long

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

John Banville

oysters real memories

In the city of flesh I travel without maps, a worried tourist: and Ottilie was a very Venice. I stumbled lost in the blue shade of her pavements. Here was a dreamy stillness, a swaying, the splash of an oar. Then, when I least expected it, suddenly I stepped out into the great square, the sunlight, and she was a flock of birds scattering with soft cries in my arms.

John Banville

venice squares cities

I've always been fascinated by physics and cosmology. It gets more and more scary the older you get.

John Banville

cosmology physics scary

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

John Banville

kindles beautiful book

All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.

John Banville

levels tragedy art

Dogs are dim creatures, do not speak to me of their good sense--have you ever heard of a team of tomcats hauling a sled across the frozen wastes?

John Banville

frozen team dog

With the crime novels, its delightful to have protagonists I can revisit in book after book. Its like having a fictitious family.

John Banville

protagonists crime-novels book