Quotes from John Banville

We writers are shy, nocturnal creatures. Push us into the light and the light blinds us.

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

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

We artists love to talk tough, but we're just as sentimental as everyone else when it comes down to it.

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

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.

I always think that if you know somebody's name then there's something slightly fraudulent about that person. Otherwise we wouldn't have heard of him or her.

I am the worst judge of my books.

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.

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.

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.

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

I want my art to make people look at the world in a new way. I mean, what's the point of the art of writing if it doesn't take you into the mysterious?

I never went to university. I'm self-educated. I didn't go because I was too impatient, too arrogant.

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

The novel is resilient, and so are novelists.

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.

When you're writing there's a deep, deep level of concentration way below your normal self. This strange voice, these strange sentences come out of you.

...being alone with him was like being in a room which someone had just violently left

In my books you have to concentrate, but I work hard to make it that, when you do, the rewards are quite high.

Office life is very, very strange. It's like no other way of living. You have an intimacy with people who you work with in the office, yet if you meet them on the streets, you both look the other way because you're embarrassed.

Art is amoral, whether we accept this or not; it does not take sides. The finest fictions are cold at heart.

When I finish a sentence, after much labor, it's finished. A certain point comes at which you can't do any more work on it because you know it will kill the sentence.

All a work of art can do is present the surface. I can't know the insides of people. I know very little about the inside of myself.