John Banville Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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Acting is in your soul.
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We watch our sons go to war, disagree with the rationale for sending them, loathe the men who ordered them to battle, and then, when the veterans come home, beg and plead with the local V.A. to ensure they have access to proper care.
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I'm all about a flat shoe. It takes a lot to get me into a heel!
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In 1960, John F. Kennedy rode a superior televised debate performance to victory over Richard Nixon.
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In the U.K., we're surrounded by American accents. Anything we watch in television. We have 'How I Met Your Mother' and all these other shows here, so it's not something that's really alien to us.
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Totalitarianism is feudalism in the twelfth century sense of the word.
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When you have the first show set in India on American television, there's gonna be a Nervous Nellie kind of vibe.
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Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of the ages through which they have passed.
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Every once in a while, I would say, 'I don't want to do this anymore,' and I would go back to third grade, and after six months, I'd say, 'OK, I'm bored. Let's go make a movie.'
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Politics disappears; it vanishes. What remains constant is human life. So I try to develop a perspective in my writing where politics is just one of the pieces of furniture in this furnished world. It is not the purpose. It is not the goal.
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I'm too obsessed that the people who say critical things about me are right, even though I'm getting to do something I love.
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There's a lot of pride that business owners have. It's actually really critical that pride and ownership extends to everyone in the organization. I think of everyone is in the same boat in driving the company forward.
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I would provide more opportunities for the kids of urban communities to go to school and learn trades - to get more jobs to take care of their families.
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When I was little, I had concerts on the subway, and old ladies came up to me like, 'You are so good!'
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This is magic we're talking about. It's supposed to go places science can't, defy logic, wink at technology, fill us all with the sensawunda that comes of gazing upon a fictional world and seeing something truly different from our own.
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The truth is, for some absurd reason, no one is willing to admit that the interests of the producers and the theater owners are not the same.
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Every time we revise our history, we also revise the mythology of our history.
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Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.
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Breathing air is a liberating experience. It freed our ancestors from the constraints of staying wet or having to remain within easy reach of water for refuge, respiration or reproduction. But the biggest change it made in our lives was to expose us to a whole new range of sensory experience.
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For me, the characters are part of the story, and come out of its development. I don't base them on people, or parts of people – the Frankenstein method. I base them on what I've noticed about the human race. … I cannot tell you how stories develop. I have an initial idea, and start telling myself the story, day by day.
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It beareth the name of Vanity Fair, because the town where it is kept is 'lighter than vanity.'
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To be taken seriously about doing something creative and probably travel a lot. That was my motivation. I knew I was good, I knew I could write. I also knew you could get laid really easily.
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I just live my own life, and I don't read any of the magazines.
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Every artist has a Dorian Gray slaving away in the attic.
