Enormous morning, ponderous, meticulous; gray light streaking each bare branch, each single twig, along one side, making another tree, of glassy veins.
John BanvilleDoing 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.
John BanvilleIt's great people still care about books, and it's great you can still fashion a life from literature.
John BanvilleAll one wants to do is make a small, finished, polished, burnished, beautiful object . . . I mean, that's all one wants to do. One has nothing to say about the world, or society, or morals or politics or anything else. One just wants to get the damn thing done, you know? Kafka had it right when he said that the artist is the man who has nothing to say. It's true. You get the thing done, but you don't actually have anything to communicate, apart from the object itself.
John Banville