“It was not just the drink, though, that was making me happy, but the tenderness of things, the simple goodness of the world. This sunset, for instance, how lavishly it was laid on, the clouds, the light on the sea, that heartbreaking, blue-green distance, laid on, all of it, as if to console some lost suffering waybarer. I have never really got used to being on this earth. Somethings I think our presence here is due to a cosmic blunder, that we were meant for another planet altogether, with other arrangements, and other laws, and other, grimmer skies. I try to imagine it, our true place, off on the far side of the galaxy, whirling and whirling. And the ones who were meant for here, are they out there, baffled and homesick, like us? No, they would have become extinct long ago. How could they survive, these gentle earthlings, in a world that was meant to contain us?”
― John Banville, quote from The Book of Evidence
“By the way, leafing through my dictionary I am struck by the poverty of language when it comes to naming or describing badness. Evil, wickedness, mischief, these words imply an agency, the conscious or at least active doing of wrong. They do not signify the bad in its inert, neutral, self-sustaining state. Then there are the adjectives: dreadful, heinous, execrable, vile, and so on. They are not so much as descriptive as judgmental. They carry a weight of censure mingled with fear. Is this not a queer state of affairs? It makes me wonder. I ask myself if perhaps the thing itself - badness - does not exist at all, if these strangely vague and imprecise words are only a kind of ruse, a kind of elaborate cover for the fact that nothing is there. Or perhaps words are an attempt to make it be there? Or, again, perhaps there is something, but the words invented it. Such considerations make me feel dizzy, as if a hole had opened briefly in the world.”
― John Banville, quote from The Book of Evidence
“Halfway up the drive there was
God these tedious details.
Halfway up there was a…”
― John Banville, quote from The Book of Evidence
“This is the only way another creature can be known: on the surface, that's where there is depth.”
― John Banville, quote from The Book of Evidence
“Oh, by the way, the plot: it almost slipped my mind. Charlie French bought my mother’s pictures cheap and sold them dear to Binkie Behrens, then bought them cheap from Binkie and sold them on to Max Molyneaux. Something like that. Does it matter? Dark deeds, dark deeds. Enough.”
― John Banville, quote from The Book of Evidence
“There is something about gin, the tang in it of the deep wildwood, perhaps, that always makes me think of twilight and mists and dead maidens. Tonight it tinkled in my mouth like secret laughter.”
― John Banville, quote from The Book of Evidence
“When I look back, no matter how hard I try I can see clear break between one phase and another. It is a seamless flow - although flow is too strong a word. More a sort of busy stasis, a sort of running on the spot. Even that was too fast for me, however, I was always a little way behind, trotting in the rear of my own life. In Dublin I was still the boy growing up at Coolgrange, in America I was the callow young man of Dublin days, on the islands I became a kind of American. And nothing was enough. Everything was coming, was on the way, was about to be. Stuck in the past, I was always peering beyond the present towards a limitless future. Now, I suppose, the future may be said to have arrived.”
― John Banville, quote from The Book of Evidence
“He made the mistake of imagining that his possessions were a measure of his own worth, and strutted and crowed, parading his things like a schoolboy with a champion catapult.”
― John Banville, quote from The Book of Evidence
“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, quote from The Book of Evidence
“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 they clawed at each other to get a look at me. They would have paid money for the privilege, I believe. They shouted abuse, and shook their fists at me, showing their teeth. It was unreal, somehow, frightening yet comic, the sight of them there, milling on the pavement like film extras, young men in cheap raincoats, and women with shopping bags, and one or two silent, grizzled characters who just stood, fixed on me hungrily, haggard with envy. Then a guard threw a blanket over my head and bundled me into a squad car. I laughed. There was something irresistibly funny in the way reality, banal as ever, was fulfilling my worst fantasies.”
― John Banville, quote from The Book of Evidence
“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, quote from The Book of Evidence
John Banville
Born place: in Wexford, Ireland
Born date December 8, 1945
See more on GoodReads
“A description of nature is what we are concerned with here. From this point
of view, then, a gas, and indeed all matter, is a myriad of moving particles. Thus
many of the things we saw while standing at the seashore can immediately be
connected. First the pressure: this comes from the collisions of the atoms with
the walls or whatever; the drift of the atoms, if they are all moving in one direc-
tion on the average, is wind; the random internal motions are the heat. There are
waves of excess density, where too many particles have collected, and so as they
Tush off they push up piles of particles farther out, and so on. This wave of excess
density is sound. It is a tremendous achievement to be able to understand so much.
Some of these things were described in the previous chapter.”
― Richard Feynman, quote from The Feynman Lectures on Physics Vol 1
“I have an awful feeling I’m supposed to know, and that this is some kind of treat. I don’t think it’s my birthday, but perhaps an anniversary. Patrick’s death? It would be just like Helen to remember and make it a “special occasion.” But I can see from the bare trees out on the street that it’s the wrong time of year. Patrick died in the spring.”
― Emma Healey, quote from Elizabeth Is Missing
“They all think it's better to exist within a corrupt hierarchy instead of being outside it, trying to fight it.”
― Kara Taylor, quote from Prep School Confidential
“One sidelong glance at his dad and Ish walked back home. ‘Where the hell are you going now?’ Ish’s dad said. ‘Match. Why? You want to curse me some more?’ Ish said. ‘When you’ve wasted your entire life, what’s another day?’ Ish’s father said and the neighbours half-nodded their heads in sympathy. We missed the final five overs of the match. Luckily, India won and Ish didn’t get that upset. ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Ishaan jumped. ‘Gopi on me tonight.’ I love idiots. Actually, Ishaan is not an idiot. At least not as much as Omi. It”
― Chetan Bhagat, quote from Three Mistakes of My Life
“What a strange god that instead of bringing people together, divides them. So”
― quote from Holy Cow
The Four Loves
Luncheon of the Boat...
Secret Teachings of...
Heartsnatcher
Old Magic
A Land More Kind Tha...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
