A Quote by John Banville
I'd given up Catholicism in my teens but something of it stays with me. I try to create the perfect sentence - that's as close to godliness as I can get.
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Writing keeps me at my desk, constantly trying to write a perfect sentence. It is a great privilege to make one's living from writing sentences. The sentence is the greatest invention of civilization. To sit all day long assembling these extraordinary strings of words is a marvelous thing. I couldn't ask for anything better. It's as near to godliness as I can get.
I have not written a perfect sentence, in the literary sense. It's a lot easier to throw a perfect pass than to write a perfect sentence, if that sentence is meant to perform more than a mechanical function.
Now the ordinary Protestant, Jew or Secularist has a stereotype about Catholicism. It consists of Spanish Catholicism, Latin-American Catholicism and, let us say, a Catholicism of O'Connor's "Great Hurrah." Now there are types of Catholicism like that but this doesn't - this doesn't do justice to the genuine relation that Catholicism has had to Democratic Society.
Writing is like everything else: the more you do it the better you get. Don't try to perfect as you go along, just get to the end of the damn thing. Accept imperfections. Get it finished and then you can go back. If you try to polish every sentence there's a chance you'll never get past the first chapter.
It's also obsessiveness. I'll spend a lot of time working on a single sentence, debating over a dash or a colon, etc. I want things to be perfect. I know nothing will ever be as perfect as I want it, and this is very sad, but sometimes I can get close.
If you're going to be an artist, you have to create music that moves you, and to not try to fit in so much with what's happening around you. It's a career choice. I could have done other kinds of songs that got me in the radio or Top 10, but I wouldn't feel proud of the work. I come up short when I create music I don't like, and fans can tell too. The goal isn't to get into it to be famous; the goal is to perfect your craft and create your own sound.
When Reebok first let me try out the Nano 10, I thought this was about as close to the perfect training shoe as you can get.
When I was in my early 20s I converted to Catholicism after a long period of searching. What I think drew me to the Catholic church is that in Catholicism, prayer suffuses all of one's life by virtue of the sacraments. Prayer is not something which occurs just on Sunday, it doesn't occur only at particular moments of intensity or by particular conventions, one's whole life is given up to prayer in many, many modes. And so everything to do with the faith is trying to put you in relationship with God and trying to make that relationship grow deeper and more mature.
When I get depressed, I try to get something for the terrible sadness that comes over me and create something in terms of poetry.
I think my wife puts up with me 'cause I try. I think that's all any guy can do is just try. That's right! 'Cause we ain't never gunna get it. 'Cause as soon as we get close you ladies change it. It's like this memo goes out, 'they're getting close, change it, change it!'
I try not to think about writers who came before me when I'm writing myself. If I did, given the abundance of literary talent Scotland - and Edinburgh in particular - has bestowed upon the world, I wouldn't be able to get as much as a sentence written.
Do I address issues of the spirit, of the soul, in my work? Yes, definitely. As for being a Catholic poet, I was born in, and into, Catholicism - Eastern Rite Maronite and Melkite Catholicism. Not being Catholic has never been a choice for me - it's in my family, my ancestry, going back centuries. Catholicism, for me, is always here.
God has given us everything we need for life and godliness. And he's given us the indwelling strength and guidance of the Holy Spirit. The rest is up to us.
I've been an activist since my late teens. I take this very seriously and try to use the gift that's been given to me - access to the media - as positively as I can.
Catholicism is not a lifeless set of rules and regulations. Catholicism is a lifestyle. Catholicism is a way of life designed by God to help you become all you can be.
If by the quarter of the twentieth century godliness wasn’t next to something more interesting than cleanliness, it might be time to reevaluate our notions of godliness.
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