Doing what you do well is death. Your duty is to keep trying to do thi — John Banville

"The past beats inside me like a second heart."

"Ian McEwan is a very good writer; the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters."

"Saramago is … interesting, but I dont think I would put it higher than that … [he] ventures too far into the realm of magic realism for my taste. Reality itself is magical enough without inventing whimsicalities."

"I would have failed, of course, but failure is the condition of the artists life. What kind of failure would I have enjoyed, suffered? I know it was not all waste. My hopeless daubings taught me to look at the world with a painters eye, despite the poor connection between eye and hand. And the smells of turpentine and linseed oil and paint-soaked rags still make my blood tingle. But words were my calling, and called to me, and I let fall the brush."

"Its amazing what success will do. Ive just started a new book after taking a break of a year and a half since finishing The Book of Evidence, and Im fascinated to see if I can detect in myself a voice saying, Tone that bit down; make that bit easier; give them a few laughs, which would be absolutely fatal. I dont think its happening, but you cant tell whats happening beneath the surface."

"If they give me the bloody prize, why cant they say nice things about me?"

"Today, you are hated throughout the world. If you dont know this, you should. The peoples burn your flag. The Islamic peoples all over the world chant: "Death to America!"

"pity this busy monster, manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease: your victim (death and life safely beyond) plays with the bigness of his littleness"

"I believe that the unity of man as opposed to other living things derives from the fact that man is the conscious life of himself. Man is conscious of himself, of his future, which is death, of his smallness, of his impotence; he is aware of others as others; man is in nature, subject to its laws even if he transcends it with his thought."

"Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil...prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon..."

"I wasnt offended by the movies content so much as by its nihilism. At a time when the world is in crisis and the country faces an important election, the response of Parker, Stone and company is to sneer at both sides—indeed, at anyone who takes the current world situation seriously. They may be right that some of us are puppets, but theyre wrong that all of us are fools, and dead wrong that it doesnt matter."

"I will re-calculate. Your deaths will be indescribable."