John Banville Quotes
We would probably claim Kafka as an Irish writer. His tone of voice is certainly quite Irish: that sense of melancholy, that sense of strangeness and of being a stranger in the world. I think that we empathise with that very much indeed.
Quotes to Explore
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Women often have a great need to portray themselves as sympathetic and pleasing, but we're also dark people with dark thoughts.
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If the 2016 election is any indication, every four years, millions more Americans will continue backing away from their own parties to choose a third party instead.
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A leader is admired, a boss is feared.
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While children are struggling to be unique, the world around them is trying all means to make them look like everybody else.
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One of the dreams of Zionism was to be a bridge. Instead, we are creating exclusion between the East and the West instead of creating bridges; we are contributing to the conflict between East and West by our stupid desire to have more.
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The trick of this thing and the beauty of this thing is that it's a cowboy movie first and then stuff happens. Even after stuff happens it doesn't change - it hasn't suddenly changed into another kind of movie. It's still a cowboy movie. And that's what's incredible about it because nobody has done that before, that's new territory.
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We advance on our journey only when we face our goal, when we are confident and believe we are going to win out.
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We need not worry so much about what man descends from - it's what he descends to that shames the human race.
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The Soviet Union was a very useful ally in the defeat of Nazi Germany.
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The shelf life of the average trade book is somewhere between milk and yogurt.
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If you took ISIS' oil, that would not stop them. It's not their only source of revenue. It would be a setback, but it would not stop them.
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Those market researchers... are playing games with you and me and with this entire country. Their so-called samples of opinion are no more accurate or reliable than my grandmother's big toe was when it came to predicting the weather.
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Children seem naturally drawn to poetry - it's some combination of the rhyme, rhythm, and the words themselves.
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Madonna and I are very different. Just saying. We're very different. I wouldn't make that comparison at all, and I don't mean to disrespect Madonna: she's a nice lady, and she's had a fantastic, huge career - biggest pop star of all time.
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One of the main lessons I have learned during my five years as Secretary-General is that broad partnerships are the key to solving broad challenges. When governments, the United Nations, businesses, philanthropies and civil society work hand-in-hand, we can achieve great things.
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Fundamentalism - of any variety - is a form of illiteracy, in that it asserts that it is necessary to read only one book.
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There are lots of things I am not good at. I'm not that good a singer. And I'm a good dad but a lousy husband because I work far too much and am not at home as much as I would like.
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If I sit down to write a young-adult novel, then I'm going to write either to the punch-pulling expectation of what I can't do, or I'm going to go the other way and think about what can I sneak in to be 'down with the kids' - which would be excruciating.
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If I've gotten to a point where people want to see something because I'm in it, I'm grateful and humbled. But having an awareness of that doesn't help me do what I need to do, I think.
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Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience.
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Some of my best friends here in New York have pasts I have a hard time reconciling with the people I'm close to now. But I wouldn't change them - or their pasts - for anything in the world. Their experiences are what made them the people they are today.
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Anybody that's been in an election, you're always looking to get the upper hand.
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Sometimes you meet people and you feel like you've known them for a long time.
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We would probably claim Kafka as an Irish writer. His tone of voice is certainly quite Irish: that sense of melancholy, that sense of strangeness and of being a stranger in the world. I think that we empathise with that very much indeed.
