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
-
Women often have a great need to portray themselves as sympathetic and pleasing, but we're also dark people with dark thoughts.
-
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.
-
A leader is admired, a boss is feared.
-
While children are struggling to be unique, the world around them is trying all means to make them look like everybody else.
-
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.
-
We advance on our journey only when we face our goal, when we are confident and believe we are going to win out.
-
We need not worry so much about what man descends from - it's what he descends to that shames the human race.
-
The Soviet Union was a very useful ally in the defeat of Nazi Germany.
-
The shelf life of the average trade book is somewhere between milk and yogurt.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Children seem naturally drawn to poetry - it's some combination of the rhyme, rhythm, and the words themselves.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Fundamentalism - of any variety - is a form of illiteracy, in that it asserts that it is necessary to read only one book.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Musical theater is an American genre. It started really, in America, as a combination of jazz and operetta; most of the great musical theater writers in the golden era are American. I think that to do a musical is a very American thing to me.
-
In recent years, the government has lost more than five million fingerprints from government employees. They have lost hundreds of millions of credit numbers from financial institutions. This problem is happening more and more and more. And the only way we can protect ourselves is to make phones more and more secure.
-
The tremendous efficiency and economy of the book has once again demonstrated itself. It's the world's most patient medium.
-
How many stories do you know about people cooped up in places because of deep snowfall? How many stories where something good happens to those people?
-
In an era of social everything, we want to spark possibility and opportunity in the creative arts, in real life, person to person.
-
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.
