John Banville quotes - page 6

The Booker Prize is a big, popular prize for big, popular books, and that's the way it should be. (John Banville)
The effect of prizes on one's career - if that is what to call it - is considerable, since they give one more clout with publishers and more notoriety among journalists. The effect on one's writing, however, is nil - otherwise, one would be in deep trouble. View quote
John Banville
The secret of survival is a defective imagination. View quote
John Banville
I have always disliked the sea, its surliness, its menace, its vast reaches and unknowable, shudder-inducing depths. View quote
John Banville
I suspect that significant first encounters only take on their aura of significance in retrospect. View quote
John Banville
I was pondering the question, which I have pondered before, of whether such great revelatory moments really so occur, or if it is only that, out of need, our lives so lacking in drama, we invest past events with a significance they do not warrant. View quote
John Banville