John Banville Quotes

In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.

I shall strip away layer after layer of grime - the toffee-colored varnish and caked soot left by a lifetime of dissembling - until I come to the very thing itself and know it for what it is. My soul. My self.

How flat all sounds are at the seaside, flat and yet emphatic, like the sound of gunshots heard at a distance.

He had scores to settle with the world, and she, at that moment, was world enough for him.