Everything we do is tinged with the knowledge that this may be the last time that we will do this, and that makes what we're doing incredibly sweet.
John BanvilleAnd indeed nothing had happened, a momentous nothing, just another of the great world's shrugs of indifference.
John BanvilleThat's one of the many things I hate about life, that it's a hideously cliched business.
John BanvilleAll art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.
John BanvilleIan McEwan is a very good writer; the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters.
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