You will remember this when all else fades, this moment, here, together, by this well. There will be certain days, and certain nights, youโll feel my presence near you, hear my voice. Youโll think you have imagined it and yet, inside you, you will catch an answering cry. On April evenings, when the rain has ceased, your heart will shake, youโll weep for nothing, pine for whatโs not there. For you, this life will never be enough, there will forever be an emptiness, where once the god was all in all in you.
John BanvilleFictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.
John BanvilleAll my life I have lied. I lied to escape, I lied to be loved, I lied for placement and power; I lied to lie. It was a way of living; lies are life's almost-anagram.
John BanvilleThroughout the 1960s and 1970s devoted Beckett readers greeted each successively shorter volume from the master with a mixture of awe and apprehensiveness; it was like watching a great mathematician wielding an infinitesimal calculus, his equations approaching nearer and still nearer to the null point.
John Banville