John Banville Zitate auf Englisch

Zitat des Tages von John Banville:

I'm a hopeless 19th-century romantic.

We're constantly losing - we're losing time, we're losing ourselves. I don't feel for the things I lost.

John Banville

All novels must be autobiographical because I am the only material that I know. All of the characters are me. But at the same time, a novel is never autobiographical even if it describes the life of the author. Literary writing is a completely different medium.

John Banville

When I started writing, I was a great rationalist and believed I was absolutely in control. But the older one gets, the more confused, and for an artist I think that is quite a good thing: you allow in more of your instinctual self; your dreams, fantasies and memories. It's richer, in a way.

John Banville

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. Which is how it should be.

John Banville

I would be far more critical than any reviewer could be of my own work. So I simply don't read them.

John Banville

I live in Dublin, God knows why. There are greatly more congenial places I could have settled in - Italy, France, Manhattan - but I like the climate here, and Irish light seems to be essential for me and for my writing.

John Banville

I read Nietzsche when I was a teenager and then I went back to reading him when I was in my thirties, and his voice spoke directly to me. Nietzsche is such a superb literary artist.

John Banville

Dostoevsky is such a bad writer it is hard to take him seriously as a novelist, though he is a wonderful philosopher.

John Banville

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.

John Banville

The effect of prizes on one's career - if that is what to call it - is considerable, since they give one more clout with publishers and more notoriety among journalists. The effect on one's writing, however, is nil - otherwise, one would be in deep trouble.

John Banville

When fans of mine meet me, I can see the disappointment in their eyes. Every artist knows of this phenomenon.

John Banville

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.

John Banville

We think we're living in the present, but we're really living in the past.

John Banville

I am the worst judge of my books.

John Banville

The Booker Prize is a big, popular prize for big, popular books, and that's the way it should be.

John Banville

Writers are just like other people, except slightly more obsessed.

John Banville

I don't make a distinction between men and women. To me they are just people.

John Banville

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

John Banville

I'm a hopeless 19th-century romantic.

John Banville

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

John Banville

The novel is resilient, and so are novelists.

John Banville

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.

John Banville

Why does the past seem so magical, so fraught, so luminous? At the time it was just, ugh, another boring bloody day. But, to look back on, it's a day full of miracles and light and extraordinary events. Why is this? What process do we apply to the past, to give it this vividness? I don't know.

John Banville