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John Banville

John Banville Books

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The Sea

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Ancient Light

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The Infinities

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Eclipse

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The Untouchable

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Long Lankin

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Mefisto

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Shroud

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Snow

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Related Quotes

“Together they will spend a happy hour seated side by side..., while Ivy's tender hand guides Duffy's as he traces out laboriously, in pencil, over and over until he has them off pat, the magic letters of his name. More than the wedding itself, that little ceremony there under the lamp, all silent save for the soft scratching of graphite on paper, will mark the true beginning of their life together.”

LoveLettersWeddingCeremony
Book:The Infinities
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“Έχω να πω το εξής για τον πόνο της ψυχής – ότι προσδίδει ένα ζοφερό βάρος στα πράγματα και ρίχνει επάνω τους ένα πρωτόγνωρα ψυχρό, αποκαλυπτικό φως. Διαστέλλει το πνεύμα, αφαιρεί το προστατευτικό εξωτερικό περίβλημα και αφήνει τον εσωτερικό εαυτό εκτεθειμένο στα στοιχεία της φύσης, με όλα τα νεύρα ξεγυμνωμένα να αντηχούν σαν χορδές της άρπας στον άνεμο.”

Pain
Book:Ancient Light
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“Still the dream persists, suppressed but always there, that somehow by some miraculous effort of the heart what was done could be undone. What form would such atonement take that would turn back time and bring the dead to life? None. None possible, not in the real world. And yet in my imaginings I can clearly see this cleansed new creature steaming up out of myself like a proselyte rising drenched from the baptismal river amid glad cries.”

PastTimeImaginationDreamsRegretForgivenessGhostsRegretsAtonementForgiveness QuotesJohn Banville
Author:John Banville
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“Ένα καλοκαίρι στην παραλία, όταν ήμουν δέκα ή έντεκα χρονών, είχα εξ’ αποστάσεως λατρέψει μια συνομήλικη μου καστανόξανθη καλλονή – υπάρχει, όμως, κανείς που, μες στη μελένια αχλή της παιδικής ηλικίας να μη λάτρεψε στην παραλία μια καστανόξανθη καλλονή;”

ChildhoodSummerMemory
Book:Ancient Light
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“Although it was autumn and not summer the dark-gold sunlight and the inky shadows, long and slender in the shape of felled cypresses, were the same, and there was the same sense of everything drenched and jewelled and the same ultramarine glitter on the sea. I felt inexplicably lightened; it was as if the evening, in all the drench and drip of its fallacious pathos, had temporarily taken over from me the burden of grieving.”

GriefWeatherMourningVivid
Book:The Sea
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“My most recent visit to the Iveagh Gardens was in the company of my younger daughter. She was sixteen at the time. I had brought her with me to show her a place precious to me, where I was once sweetly and unhappily in love. However, I discovered...that she knew the place well. Her boyfriend...lived nearby, and it was here, on weekdays after school, that they would come to walk, and be together, discussing the great issues of the day, finding out about each other, learning to grow up. As she told me this, in her not unkind though offhand way--the young are entirely deaf to the joggling palpitations of an aged heart--I had a sense of the magical timelessness of such places, and of the uses to which we put them. We change, we age, we stay or move away, and in time we end. The park, however, endures. It is a thought, I think, to comfort, if only by a little, the most distressed of hearts.”

Dublin
Author:John Banville
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“Years ago, he shaved off his beard, without telling her, just appeared at the breakfast table one morning with half his face missing, or so it seemed to her in the first, shocked moment of seeing him. If she had met him in the street she would not have recognised him, except for his eyes. How strange he looked, grotesque, almost, with those indecently naked cheeks and the chin flat and square like the blunt edge of a stone axe. It was as if the top part of his head had been taken off and carved and trimmed and jammed down into the scooped-out jaws of a stranger. She almost wept, but he went on eating his toast as if nothing had happened. He had bought a cut-throat razor with an ivory handle, an antique thing from the last century; he showed it to her in its black velvet box lined with scarlet satin. She could not look at it without a shiver. He liked to show off his skill with it, and would leave the bathroom door open so she could admire the deft way he wielded the dangerous, gleaming thing, holding it at an elegant angle between fingertips and thumb, his little finger fastidiously crooked, and sweeping the blade raspingly through the snow-like foam. Harsh light above the bath and the steely shine of the mirror and one dark, humorously cocked eye glancing at her sideways from the glass. Where is it now, she wonders, that razor? In a week or two he got tired of using it and let his beard grow back.”

BeardComaRazorBeardless
Book:The Infinities
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“Writing keeps me at my desk, constantly trying to write a perfect sentence. It is a great privilege to make one’s living from writing sentences. The sentence is the greatest invention of civilization. To sit all day long assembling these extraordinary strings of words is a marvelous thing… For me, a line has to sing before it does anything else. The great thrill is when a sentence that starts out being completely plain suddenly begins to sing, rising far above itself and above any expectation I might have had for it. That’s what keeps me going on those dark December days when I think about how I could be living instead of writing.”

Writing
Author:John Banville
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“Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, but when I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given over to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit it, for cosiness. This is a surprising, not to say a shocking, realization. Before, I saw myself as something of a buccaneer, facing all-comers with a cutlass in my teeth, but now I am compelled to acknowledge that this was a delusion. To be concealed, protected, guarded, that is all I have truly wanted, to burrow down into a place of womby warmth and cower there, hidden from the sky’s indifferent gaze and the harsh air’s damagings. That is why the past is just such a retreat for me, I go there eagerly, rubbing my hands and shaking off the cold present and the colder future. And yet, what existence, really, does it have, the past? After all, it is only what the present was, once, the present that is gone, no more than that. And yet.”

LiteratureIrish WritersJohn Banville
Book:The Sea
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“Happiness was different in childhood. It was so much then a matter simply of accumulation, of taking things - new experiences, new emotions - and applying them like so many polished tiles to what would someday be the marvellously finished pavilion of the self. And incredulity, that too was a large part of being happy, I mean that euphoric inability fully to believe one's simple luck.”

HappinessThe SeaIrish LiteratureJohn Banville
Book:The Sea
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“All one wants to do is make a small, finished, polished, burnished, beautiful object . . . I mean, that's all one wants to do. One has nothing to say about the world, or society, or morals or politics or anything else. One just wants to get the damn thing done, you know? Kafka had it right when he said that the artist is the man who has nothing to say. It's true. You get the thing done, but you don't actually have anything to communicate, apart from the object itself.”

KnowsMenWorldWantMeanSaidDoneBeautifulArtistMoralObjectsHe ManCommunicateFinishedDamnThings DonePolishedTrue YouDamn ThingsBeautiful Objects
Author:John Banville
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