John Banville Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I'm crazy about the Coen brothers, I'm crazy about Sean Penn. I love the usual suspects like Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep and people like that.
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I'm the lightest sleeper. I can hear a pin drop. It's been worse since I was ill. I think your inner ear is always half open, listening out for the faintest danger sign.
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I don't even have my own computer.
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And the beautiful open spaces, the forests of Pennsylvania, the recreational uses that come from having these green open spaces and forests, they contribute dramatically to the level of our tourism, dramatically.
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I never thought I'd be an actor.
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This is where young players today want to land. They want to be NBA players because of the money.
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I'm constantly intimidated by Shakespeare's work. Trying to decipher what he's saying and holding on to that thought - not just as an actor, but as a human being - is a rigour.
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The most important thing is to just be good at what you do. You do a good job playing the character, and people will be taken up with your character, not your clothes.
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I hardly ever stretch the canvas before painting.
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I spent a lot of time with a crown on my head.
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I had this dream in my head of, if I got hired by 'SNL, what that moment would be like. And I dreamed that I would, like, collapse on the sidewalk and cry to the heavens. I got this call, and it didn't happen naturally. But I did it anyway because I wanted to have that moment. So I did collapse.
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I stuff animals I find; I do roadkill. They're strangely fun to have. They're like easy-to-control pets.
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I will keep my word. My father fled Cuba, and I will fight to defend liberty because my family knows what it's like to lose it.
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The relationship between violence and nonviolence in this country is interesting. The fact of the matter is, you know, people do respond to riots. The 1968 Housing Act was in large response to riots that broke out after Dr. Martin Luther King was killed. They cited these as an actual inspiration.
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During my early years, I was mercurially lively, always in motion, spilling over with pranks, impertinent and precocious, and, at the same time, intractably stubborn and angry if anything went against my will.
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Mountain climbing is my passion, and to empower women through my expeditions is the reason. I am doing the mountain climbing to empower women.
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The expectation was that 'True Confessions' would be my first published book, but that didn't happen. After it was rejected by every publisher in New York and Canada, I shoved it in a closet and went on to write and publish my next three books.
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If you wanted to show a mirror to people that says, 'You've been drunk on money,' they're not going to want to see it. But if you reflected that mirror on another time they'd be willing to. People will need an explanation of where we are and where we've been, and 'The Great Gatsby' can provide that explanation.
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I go out with my band six months of the year and the rest of them with the Blues Brothers.
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To find is the thing.
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You see, unfortunately, I am not black. There are lots of different kinds of blood in our family. But here in the United States, the word 'Negro' is used to mean anyone who has any Negro blood at all in his veins. In Africa, the word is more pure. It means all Negro, therefore black. I am brown. My father was a darker brown. My mother an olive-yellow.
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My dad was in the army. World War II. He got his college education from the army. After World War II he became an insurance salesman. Really, I didn't know my dad very well. He and my mother split up after the war. I was raised by my maternal grandmother and grandfather, and by my mother.
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Oh, I'm terribly ignorant of Czech literature. It's disgraceful really.
