Quotes from John Banville

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

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

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

My work is frequently described as cold, which is baffling, since it seems to me embarrassingly, shame-makingly, scandalously warm. I find my work filled with sentiment, and I can't imagine why people find it cold.

What is money, after all? Almost nothing, when one has a sufficiency of it.

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

Ian McEwan is a very good writer; the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Doing what you do well is death. Your duty is to keep trying to do things that you don't do well, in the hope of learning.

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

No two things the same, the equals sign a scandal.

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

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.

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.

You can't write about fantasy without being ridiculous.

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.

I have never done anything in my life that did not have a purpose, usually hidden, sometimes even from myself.

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.

Let's not despise story-telling. Like all novelists, I have this low desire to tell people stories.

This was in the days when I was making myself over. So difficult it was, to judge just so, to forge the fine discriminations, to maintain a balance--no one could know how difficult. If it had been a work of art I was fashioning they would have applauded my mastery. Perhaps that was my mistake, to do it all in secret, instead of openly, with a flourish. They would have been entertained; they would have forgiven me; Harlequin is always forgiven, always survives.