A Quote by John Banville

When I started writing, I was a great rationalist and believed I was absolutely in control. But the older one gets, the more confused, and for an artist I think that is quite a good thing: you allow in more of your instinctual self; your dreams, fantasies and memories. It's richer, in a way.
Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality. If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge.
I'm starting to shake it off, I am quite self-conscious, and it's only when I'm playing roles that I can escape that. The older I get, the more people tell me it's absolutely fine to be the way you are with all your quirks and nuances, and I wish I'd learnt that younger - I would have relaxed a bit more.
When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later.. later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches.
The older I got, I started to realize more it's not necessarily that any of us are inherently bad or good; you just kind of carve your own way, and you are your experiences and your surroundings and what you grow up in.
The great thing for me, now, is that writing has become more and more interesting. Not just as a craft but as a way into things that are not described. It's a thing of discovering. That's when writing is really working. You're on the trail of something and you don't quite know what it is.
The great thing for me, now, is that writing has become more and more interesting. Not just as a craft but as a way into things that are not described. It's a thing of discovering. That's when writing is really working. You're on the trail of something, and you don't quite know what it is.
What you think upon grows. Whatever you allow to occupy your mind you magnify in your life. Whether the subject of your thought be good or bad, the law works and the condition grows. Any subject that you keep out of your mind tends to diminish in your life, because what you do not use atrophies. The more you think of grievances, the more such trials you will continue to receive; the more you think of the good fortune you have had, the more good fortune will come to you.
Celibacy can only be spontaneous, there is no other type of celibacy. If it is not spontaneous, it is not celibacy. You can force it. you can control your sexuality, but that is not going to help. You will not be celibate, you will be only more and more sexual. Sex will spread all over your being. It will become part of your unconscious. It will move your dreams, it will become your motivation in dreams, it will become your fantasy. In fact, you will become more sexual than you ever were before. You will think more about it and you will have to repress it again and again.
I've got a lot of great memories. The journey was great. It just probably makes you more hungry the second time. I'm a lot older and I think I appreciate it more being older now and how hard it is to get to the Final and win it.
I feel as though, if you're able to control your dreams, you have more power and control over your mind, like you could reach more areas of your mind. Therefore, I feel like it creates the ability for you to achieve more things in reality.
Don't think about what the market's going to do; you have absolutely no control over that. Think about what you're going to do if it gets there. In particular, you should spend no time at all thinking about those rosy scenarios in which the market goes your way, since in those situations, there's nothing more for you to do. Focus instead on those things you want least to happen and on what your response will be.
Music and art is about ideas, I think. Especially music. You have the freedom to work with your ideas and your dreams and your fantasies, which is quite hard to do in many other places.
You have to define success in your own way. What maintains your dignity and integrity and what is your life's plan; where do you want to put your efforts? I could be richer and more famous, but I would have to give up things that are of infinitely more value.
Be true to the best you know. This is your high ideal. If you do your best, you cannot do more. Do your best every day and your life will gradually expand into satisfying fullness. Cultivate the habit of doing one thing at a time with quiet deliberateness. Always allow yourself a sufficient margin of time in which to do your work well. Frequently examine your working methods to discover and eliminate unnecessary tension. Aim at poise, repose, and self-control. The relaxed worker accomplishes most.
If you can allow yourself to do more good with your creativity by being successful, then that's a great thing.
The more you’re writing absolutely honestly, and absolutely bare of intention - even if it feels absolutely personal and small because it’s at your own scale - other people relate to it much more.
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