John Banville Quotes
Doing what you do well is death. Your duty is to keep trying to do things that you don't do well, in the hope of learning.
Quotes to Explore
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To the poet fated to be a poet, self-expression is as natural and as involuntary as breathing is to us ordinary mortals.
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China has the best opportunities. A domestic market with 1.3bn people will help create more Fortune 500 retailers.
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Musical compositions can be very sad - Chopin - but you have the pleasure of this sadness. The cheap consolation is: you will be happy. The higher consolation is the pleasure and recognition of your unhappiness, the pleasure of having recognised that fate, destiny and life are such as they are and so you reach a higher form of consciousness.
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Ancient Egyptians went to great lengths to avoid change; they couldn't entirely do so, of course, but did preserve a cultural continuity for almost four thousand years.
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Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
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The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. That's the only difference.
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I only buy a computer when it's two years old, after the glitches have been worked out.
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As the great grandchildren of the industrial revolution, we have learned, at last, that the heedless pursuit of more is unsustainable and, ultimately, unfulfilling. Our planet, our security, our sense of equanimity and our very souls demand something better, something different.
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I'm no good with chords. I'm horrible with chords.
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When someone says something in an interview, the beauty of Twitter is that it's a platform for instantaneous response.
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I did try fillers once. Don't ever have fillers because when your cheekbones are high, it's chipmunk time.
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We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place.
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Social conditions that spur large numbers of people into action are ignored in favor of a Hollywood version of history focusing on one conquering hero. Since a movement for social change is embodied in its leader, death of the leader means death of the movement.
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Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit.
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Living in Malibu is like being in a bubble, so discovering others that are so different from me has been incredibly gratifying.
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I became interested in educating people in the variety of ways in which women can express their emotion. Which is much easier to do in a large role than in a supporting role to a male protagonist. In general, the women in a supporting role to a male protagonist - cry a lot.
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My passion is to create a better society for our future citizens.
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I'm fine, except, you know, I broke my pelvis. And that's not much fun.
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I don't write beautifully - I just write reports about our condition.
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Love isn't how well you know someone, it is how they make you feel.
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I wanted to be a comedian, and this is what I'm doing. If I can keep this going, I'm happy.
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There are temptations around you all the time. The trick is to work your way through anxiety or your tiredness or whatever, and not let yourself get so hungry that you're going and stopping for the burgers, and you don't view it as reward. You're doing better for yourself is eating better food.
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No one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.
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Doing what you do well is death. Your duty is to keep trying to do things that you don't do well, in the hope of learning.
