John Banville Quotes

Fiction is just a constant torment, and an embarrassment. I loathe my fiction. I have a fantasy when I'm passing a bookstore that I could click my fingers and all my books would go blank, so that I could start again and get them right.

John Banville

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• You have to be un-comfortably comfortable in this business. There's always somebody else who wants what you have.

  

  Malik Jackson
  • Business
  • You
  • Always

• Suggest your children try tithing - giving 10 percent of their allowance to a charity every month.

  

  Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen
  • Children
  • Giving
  • Charity

• Developing skills is as important as training. A larger effort is needed to create a skilled workforce with employment potential.

  

  Pallam Raju
  • Important
  • Effort
  • Training

• Like anything else, acting can become boring - a chore, really - if there isn't any challenge. And I like taking challenges. Just when people think they have me figured out, I like to surprise them.

  

  Laura Dern
  • People
  • Challenge
  • Challenges

• I'm 21 years old, and it's kind of uncomfortable for me to talk about, but I'm in the 1 percent as far as my income and tax bracket. But now that I'm here, there's no amount of money you can wave in front of my face that will make me understand depriving people of human rights.

  

  Halsey
  • People
  • Money
  • Human Rights

• Napster hijacked our music without asking. They never sought our permission. Our catalog of music simply became available as free downloads on the Napster system.

  

  Lars Ulrich Metallica
  • Music
  • Free
  • Never

• Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

  

  Isaac Asimov
  • Believe
  • Education
  • Kind

• I hate to sound this way but, 'Why me? Why me with dementia?'

  

  Pat Summitt
  • Way
  • Hate
  • Me

• You have to ask yourself if you want to be the kind of actress who's interesting, or the kind of actress who's meant to play the pretty-but-uninteresting wife of a chubby guy on a network sitcom.

  

  Wendi McLendon-Covey
  • Guy
  • Pretty
  • Interesting

• Books are an ancient and proven medium. Their physical form inspires passion.

  

  Gary Wolf
  • Passion
  • Books
  • Physical

• I was aware that everybody said I was going to be a vast mega-flop, and that William Hague was just oh-so intelligent, and oh such a great parliamentarian, and therefore so different from me! So I thought, I must deprive them of the satisfaction of proving themselves right.

  

  Harriet Harman
  • Great
  • Different
  • Thought

• I think the fans are going to expect a lot from me, as they should.

  

  Wayne Rooney
  • Think
  • Me
  • Fans

• I am the freest author in the world.

  

  Joanne Rowling
  • World
  • Author
  • Freest

• In the middle of my sophomore year, I was sent to boarding school, at the Cranbrook School for boys, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where I fell in love with Marilyn Monroe. I knew that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and yet she was in pain, in need. She was unhappy. I believed that I could help her.

  

  Edmund White
  • World
  • Beautiful
  • Woman

• My father-in-law just happens to be a global procurement guru. Now retired, he was the global head of procurement for some of the biggest companies in the world as well as our very own treasury.

  

  Ian Watson
  • World
  • Father
  • Law

• When I was younger, I used to visualise myself scoring wonder goals, stuff like that.

  

  Wayne Rooney
  • Myself
  • Wonder
  • Goals

• My '50s were different than other people's '50s. The myth didn't permeate our world, 'Donna Reed' and all that. I longed for that, I wanted to be like other normal families on TV.

  

  Gary Ross
  • People
  • World
  • Different

• I think some people have a rare ability to focus. As a player, Earl Thomas has it. When he was at practice or in a game, he was always on; he was right there.

  

  Dan Quinn
  • People
  • Game
  • Focus

• When I learned a little bit about du Pont and a little bit about Mark Schultz, I was attracted to the notion that these incredibly different people found each other and seemed, for a moment, to be the answer that each was looking for.

  

  Bennett Miller
  • People
  • Different

• One misconception I think is wrong is that being a larger size means, somehow, that you're neglecting your body, or you don't look after yourself, or you don't love yourself enough to lose weight. We've been saturated with the idea that to be happy you must be thin, or to be healthy you must be thin.

  

  Philomena Kwao
  • Happy

• The effectiveness of work increases according to geometric progression if there are no interruptions.

  

  Andre Maurois
  • Work

• That is what has happened to the United States in the international economic scene. We have deteriorated into a debtor status so that we are now dependent upon the kindness of strangers. That is not where the world's leading power should find itself.

  

  Paul Sarbanes
  • World
  • Kindness
  • Economic

• Fiction is just a constant torment, and an embarrassment. I loathe my fiction. I have a fantasy when I'm passing a bookstore that I could click my fingers and all my books would go blank, so that I could start again and get them right.

  

  John Banville