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Link	Quote	Stars	Tags	Author
aef8aff	Everything in the room seemed turned away from me in sullen resistance, averthing itself from my unwelcome return.			John Banville
e089752	Inhabiting a place that could not be home, they were like actors compelled to play themselves.			John Banville
bd3c4ea	I think he is losing heart in his attempts to woo her. In that bright-yellow waistcoat, the bottom button always punctiliously undone and the pointed flaps open over his neat little paunch, he is as intent and circumspect as one of those outlandishly plumed male birds, peacock or cock peasant, who gorgeously stalk up and down at a distance, desperate of eye but pretending indifference, while the drab hen unconcernedly pecks in the gravel fo..		love	John Banville
cd506fd	Another week done with. How quickly the time goes as the season advances, the earth hurtling along its groove into the years's sharply descending final arc.			John Banville
f78860f	None of this means anything. Anything of significance, that is. I am just amusing myself, musing, losing myself in a welter of words. For words in here are a form of luxury, of sensuousness, they are all we have been allowed to keep of the rich, wasteful world from which we are shut away.			John Banville
b954946	It is hard for anyone who has not given himself wholeheartedly to a belief (and I say again, Miss V., that is how it is: you give yourself to it, it does not fall upon you like sanctifying grace from Heaven) to appreciate how the believer's conscious mind can separate itself into many compartments containing many, conflicting, dogmas. These are not sealed compartments; they are like the cells of a battery (I think this is how a battery work..			John Banville
1a0f645	When I look back all is flux, without beginning and flowing towards no end, or none that I shall experience, except as a final full stop. The items of flotsam that I choose to salvage from the general wreckage--and what is a life but a gradual shipwreck?--may take on an aspect of inevitability when I put them on display in their glass showcases, but they are random; representative, perhaps, perhaps compellingly so, but random nonetheless.		life-and-death	John Banville
adc34de	Hanh phuc thua au tho rat khac. Luc ay no chi don gian la chuyen tich luy, chuyen nhat nhanh nhung trai nghiem moi, nhung xuc cam moi va gan chung nhu nhung vien gach lat bong loang len cai sau nay se la toa lau hoan chinh ky dieu cua ban nga.		tr178 ấuthơ	John Banville
168b814	I had a sudden image of myself as a sort of large dark simian something slumped there at the table, or not a something but a nothing, rather, a hole in the room, a palpable absence, a darkness visible.			John Banville
45d505c	The true workers all die in a fidget of frustration. So much to do, and so much left undone.			John Banville
6cb9528	The steel kettle shone, a slow furl of steam at its spout, vaguely suggestive of genie and lamp. Oh, grant me a wish, just the one.			John Banville
d348b01	The fact is, whenever I made an overture to a woman, which I seldom did, even in my young days, I never really expected it to be entertained, or even noticed, despite certain instances of success, which I tended to regards as flukes, the result of misunderstanding, or dimness on the part of the woman and simple good fortune on mine. I'm not an immediately alluring specimen, having been, for a start, the runt of the litter. I'm short and sto..			John Banville
ebc2aa1	MY LORD, when you ask me to tell the court in my own words, this is what I shall say. I am kept locked up here like some exotic animal, last survivor of a species they had thought extinct. They should let in people to view me, the girl-eater, svelte and dangerous, padding to and fro in my cage, my terrible green glance flickering past the bars, give them something to dream about, tucked up cosy in their beds of a night. After my capture the..			John Banville
3e869bd	The daylight too is strange, even outside, in the yard, as if something has happened to it, as if something has been done to it, before it is allowed to reach us. It has an acid, lemony cast, and comes in two intensities: either it is not enough to see by or it sears the sight. Of the various kinds of darkness I shall not speak.			John Banville
e80d956	I marvelled, not for the first time, at the cruel complacency of ordinary things. But no, not cruel, not complacent, only indifferent, as how could they be otherwise? Henceforth, I would have to address things as they are, not as I imagine them, for this was a new version of reality.		perception reality	John Banville
bfae2d3	Me pregunto si los demas, de ninos, tienen ese tipo de imagen, a la vez vaga y concreta, de lo que les gustaria ser de mayores. No hablo de esperanzas y aspiraciones, ni de vagas ambiciones, ese tipo de cosa. Desde el principio fui muy preciso y definido en mis expectativas. No queria ser maquinista de tren ni un explorador famoso. Cuando escudrinaba anhelante a traves de las nieblas de lo solidamente real de entonces a lo felizmente imagin..			John Banville
1aa439a	We do not grow up; all we do is grow dull.			John Banville
fffe0e1	It is in the forms of the living that the dead most convincingly haunt us.			John Banville
d924d67	Belief is hard, and the abyss is always there, under one's feet.			John Banville
c71316a	Ma ei looda surmajargsele elule ega jumalusele, kes voiks seda pakkuda. Arvestades, missuguse maailma ta loi, oleks temasse uskumine jumalavallatus.			John Banville
5c0272a	Guilt is the only affect I know of that does not diminish with time. Nor does the guilty conscience have any sense of priority or right proportion.			John Banville
ff77eb0	I am, as is surely apparent by now, a thing made up wholly of poses. In this I may not be unique, it may be thus for everyone, more or less, I do not know, or care. What I do know is that having lived my life in the awareness, or even if only in the illusion, of being constantly watched, constantly under scrutiny, I am all frontage; stroll around to the back and all you will find is some sawdust and a few shaky struts and a mess of wiring. ..			John Banville
634aa55	What a little vessel of sadness we are, sailing in this muffled silence through the autumn dark.		sea	John Banville
d2c4ded	There was a beat of silence and the atmosphere thickened briefly. I glanced from one of them to the other, seeming to detect an invisible something passing between them, not so much a signal as a sort of silent token, like one of those almost impalpable acknowledgements that adulterers exchange when they are in company. The phenomenon was strange to me still but would become increasingly familiar the deep I penetrated into the secret world.			John Banville
6c4ec94	The common people?--pah. What are they to us? You and I, mein Freund, we are lords of the earth, the great ones, the major men, the makers of supreme fictions.			John Banville
93ae5ff	bavshvobashi bedniereba sul sxva ramea. metcilad ubralod agroveb axal grz'nobebs, shegrz'nebebs t`u gamoc`dilebas da mere im priala mozaikasavit` acqob, ert` mshvenier dg'es shenive sakut`ar, ukve dasrulebul me-d rom dalagdeba.			John Banville
d193f96	t`it`i uneburad tuch`ebze movisvi, im tuch`ebze c`ota xnis cin mas rom koc`nidnen. etqoba, velodi rag'ac` jados cqalobit`, tuch`ebic` unda shec`vliliqvnen, t`undac` sul odnav, sxvebist`vis t`it`k`mis sheumch`nevlad. saert`od, megona qvelap`eri shiec`vleboda zustad iseve, rogorc` t`avad is dg'e gadasxvap`erda.			John Banville
c3099d5	me mxolod micieri t`vit`gamoxatvis cams veli. scored asea: mt`lianad, ert`ianad gamovxatav sakut`ar t`avs da gavt`avisup`ldebi rogorc` saboloo, samadlobeli sitqvis mt`k`meli. mokled amovit`k`mebi.			John Banville
8a53601	Lots of water under that bridge, let's not drown ourselves in it.			John Banville
a7a6b77	If they give me the bloody prize, why can't they say nice things about me?			John Banville
7a921a1	The white May blossom swooned slowly into the open mouth of the grave.			John Banville
3f706a6	I suspect that significant first encounters only take on their aura of significance in retrospect.			John Banville
0e38973	Man is only lovable in the multitude, and at a good distance.			John Banville
ae4233a	Let's not despise story-telling. Like all novelists, I have this low desire to tell people stories.			John Banville
2de74cf	Ambiguity is the essence of Irish writing, I think.			John Banville
920f656	We writers are shy, nocturnal creatures. Push us into the light and the light blinds us.			John Banville
14e2c6f	Summoned, one shuffles guiltily into the department of trivia.			John Banville
c29668b	Oh, I'm terribly ignorant of Czech literature. It's disgraceful really.			John Banville
2ba3f65	I'm doing my best to not be too rude about it, but oh my God that Czech food...			John Banville
efccd14	There is something slightly sinister about Prague, just as there is about Lyon and Turin.			John Banville
fbc3fbb	The world is a dark place, and I find it endlessly funny.			John Banville
5208aaf	I'm a little older now and I think I've lightened up a bit as I'm getting older.			John Banville
94d2419	I like to hide in Ireland, but I like to think of myself as an internal exile.			John Banville
33ad881	One must try to keep a sensible perspective and not take oneself too seriously.			John Banville

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