John Banville: Quotes about thinking

John Banville is Irish writer. Explore interesting quotes on thinking.
John Banville: 194 quotes0 likes

“The force of the idea was such that I drew the car to the side of the road and stopped and, for some reason, laughed. It was a loud laugh, unsteady, and sounded, even to my own ears, slightly maniacal. Thinking back now, I realise it was less a laugh than the birth-cry of my dark and twin brother Benjamin Black.”

John Banville

John Banville on the birth of his dark twin, Benjamin Black (2011)

“I suppose many people in Ireland would regard me as being more a European writer than an Irish writer. I don't think this is so.”

John Banville

John Banville: claiming Kafka as an Irish writer (2011)

“The first thought that occurred to me, that night when I heard the chairman of the jury announce my name, was, Just think how many people hate me at this moment. Naturally, I wanted to annoy those people even further by being arrogant.”

John Banville

About the Man Booker Prize
John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)

“The older I get, the more confused I get. I used to think that age would bring wisdom. It doesn't, it just brings confusion. But I find that this confusion is artistically useful. It's a kind of progression, a negative progression. It's moving into areas that you didn't know were there. It becomes more dreamlike all the time. When I was starting out as a novelist, I would have been furious if anyone said to me that novels are dream-like or that they're doing things the novelist didn't know he was doing. Now, I find that it's absolutely true.”

John Banville

Oblique dreamer (2000)

“I feel that over the past 15 years, there has been a steady move toward more populist work. I do feel - and of course I'm completely biased - that this year was a return to the better days of the 80s and early 90s. It was a very good short list and a decent jury; it didn't have any stand-up comedians or media celebs on it, and I think that's what the Man Booker prize should be. There are plenty of other rewards for middle-brow fiction. There should be one decent prize for [pause] real books.”

John Banville

14th time lucky (2005)

“I could have kept [writing "Irish" novels such as Birchwood] and probably had a good deal more success than I did, especially on this side of the Atlantic. But you have to try to do many things. You have to try to do things that you actually think you're incapable of.”

John Banville

Once More Admired Than Bought, A Writer Finally Basks in Success (1990)

“Ambiguity is the essence of Irish writing, I think.”

John Banville

Oblique dreamer (2000)

“Saramago is … interesting, but I don't think I would put it higher than that … [he] ventures too far into the realm of 'magic realism' for my taste. Reality itself is magical enough without inventing whimsicalities.”

John Banville

Quote from The militant magician http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/dec/28/featuresreviews.guardianreview11?INTCMP=SRCH, The Guardian (28 December 2002).

“Well, [Kepler] reminded me of myself – the little man running desperately in circles, trying to find an explanation for the world, for his place in it, to find a plausible system, to account for reality – and never finding it. Finding lots of rules and laws which are very important, but never actually finding his own way into what it is to be in the world – very much an existentialist before his time, I think.”

John Banville

John Banville: claiming Kafka as an Irish writer (2011)

“[W]e would probably claim Kafka as an Irish writer. His tone of voice is certainly quite Irish: that sense of melancholy, that sense of strangeness and of being a stranger in the world. I think that we empathise with that very much indeed.”

John Banville

John Banville: claiming Kafka as an Irish writer (2011)

“Benjamin Black is a craftsman and these are crafted works. I'm very proud of them. I think they're well made, but Banville is doing something else – he's trying to make a kind of poetry, I suppose. I'm a perfectionist. It's an illness but a good illness. It's a completely different method of writing. Banville writes with a fountain pen on paper in a manuscript book and Black works straight on to the screen. It could take me a whole morning to write a few sentences as Banville, but as Black I'd be very annoyed if I didn't have at least two or three pages done. This drives crime-writers crackers because they think I'm saying that their craft is not worth it. I'm simply saying it's a different thing. I don't know why they worry when I talk about speed; after all, Georges Simenon wrote his books in about 10 days.”

John Banville

John Banville: Who cares whodunnit? (2013)

“It's amazing what success will do. I've just started a new book after taking a break of a year and a half since finishing 'The Book of Evidence,' and I'm fascinated to see if I can detect in myself a voice saying, 'Tone that bit down; make that bit easier; give them a few laughs,' which would be absolutely fatal. I don't think it's happening, but you can't tell what's happening beneath the surface.”

John Banville

Once More Admired Than Bought, A Writer Finally Basks in Success (1990)

“I'm a little surprised that commercial success has arrived. I used to think that it was hopeless, that it would never happen.”

John Banville

Once More Admired Than Bought, A Writer Finally Basks in Success (1990)

“T. S. Eliot said it is no business of the artist to think. I presume he meant it's only the business of the artist to feel, but I like the notion of there being a mind behind the fiction that I read and that I write.”

John Banville

John Banville: claiming Kafka as an Irish writer (2011)

“If you look at practically anyone - I mean, I find this more and more - the more you look at people the more you find that they've actually manufactured themselves. People whose names that you know. I meet lots of people in my ordinary life, away from writing, who seem to be authentic, who seem to know where they've come from and who they are, but anyone that I deal with in, if you like, my profession, we all seem to have made ourselves. I think artists are all self-made.”

John Banville

Oblique dreamer (2000)

“I like to hide in Ireland, but I like to think of myself as an internal exile.”

John Banville

John Banville: claiming Kafka as an Irish writer (2011)

“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

14th time lucky (2005)

“I often think that there was nothing more exciting and erotic than getting a glimpse of a woman's leg at the top of her stockings. There's something about that white bulge and for anybody who grew up in my time, nothing replaces that, nothing. I remember I had a girlfriend when I was 16 and she had this bra – it used to open down the front – which I thought was absolutely wonderful. It was like opening a tabernacle.”

John Banville

John Banville: Who cares whodunnit? (2013)

“Look at what goes on in our heads when we think about our family or we think about sex. There are things in there that you'd never really say to anybody. You're even ashamed to think it yourself.”

John Banville

John Banville: Who cares whodunnit? (2013)

“If you think I'm being bleak, I'm not. It's wonderful to be making yourself up. That's what makes life so exciting. It's an unending adventure.”

John Banville

John Banville: Who cares whodunnit? (2013)