Quotes by : John Banville

There is something about gin, the tang in it of the deep wildwood, perhaps, that always makes me think....

The secret of survival is a defective imagination.

He had scores to settle with the world, and she, at that moment, was world enough for him.

What I was afraid of was my own grief, the weight of it, the ineluctable corrosive force of it, and the....

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition.....

The dead are my dark matter, filling up impalpably the empty spaces of the world.

Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, but when I look....

When I look back all is flux, without beginning and flowing towards no end, or none that I shall experience,....

Writing keeps me at my desk, constantly trying to write a perfect sentence. It is a great privilege to....

I'm full of self-doubt. I doubt everything I do. Everything I do is a failure.