A Quote by John Banville

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off. — © John Banville
Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.
I find myself so easily discouraged. It is pathetic how easily I can be discouraged - easily discouraged by resistance, easily discouraged by opposition, easily discouraged by hardness of heart, easily discouraged by blindness.
I think when you're happy, emotions are right near the top - mine definitely are. I cry easily, I laugh easily, I lose my temper easily... and I beg for forgiveness easily.
Women's words are as light as the doomed leaves whirling in autumn, Easily swept by the wind, easily drowned by the wave.
He who writes much will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of particular modes as may be easily noted.
Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.
If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.
The first step is to measure whatever can easily be measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.
If only people could travel as easily as words. Wouldn't that be something? If only we could be so easily revised.
Suppose that I see a hungry child in the street, and I am able to offer the child some food. Am I morally culpable if I refuse to do so? Am I morally culpable if I choose not to do what I easily can about the fact that 1000 children die every hour from easily preventable disease, according to UNICEF? Or the fact that the government of my own "free and open society" is engaged in monstrous crimes that can easily be mitigated or terminated? Is it even possible to debate these questions?
My grandfather killed himself falling off the dike in Ostend while photographing my two cousins. This can happen so easily when looking through a lens: for a split second nothing else exists outside the frame.
Love is easily killed.
When I was young and easily outraged, I would be upset when every fictional character I created was somehow reduced to 'autobiography.'
Someday you will read in the papers that Moody is dead. Don't you believe a word of it. At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now. I was born of the flesh in 1837, I was born of the spirit in 1855. That which is born of the flesh may die. That which is born of the Spirit shall live forever.
The challenge in writing a show that's about people and their flaws is that it can easily tip over - okay, I'll sometimes watch something, and there will be characters that are written in a way that I'll know that the writer just hates human beings. They're expressing this misanthropic point of view with these detestable characters.
Books are easily destroyed. But words will live as long as people can remember them.
The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.
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