Quotenik
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John Banville

(b. 1945–)

Irish novelist and screenwriter

“Occasionally I will leave behind a sentence that I know is missing a word, and I’ll go back to it later. I wrote a sentence like that yesterday. A man is talking about his wife, who’s a singer. She has just woken up in the morning, and he says, ‘Even half asleep like this, she sounded a true, dark note, a thrilling…’ I put in ‘cadence,’ but I know it’s not the right word—so the sentence is just sitting there, waiting for me to find the right, the exact, the only word.”

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source: “The Art of Fiction No. 200,” interviewed by Belinda McKeon, in Issue 188 of The Paris Review, 2009.

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medium: Interview

notes: view transcript here

“The great thrill is when a sentence that starts out being completely plain suddenly begins to sing, rising far above itself and above any expectation I might have had for it. That’s what keeps me going on those dark December days when I think about how I could be living instead of writing.”

more info

source: “The Art of Fiction No. 200,” interviewed by Belinda McKeon, in Issue 188 of The Paris Review, 2009.

category: , ,

medium: Interview

notes: view transcript here

“It’s only now and then, maybe once every three or four days, that I manage to write a sentence in which I hear that wonderful harmonic chime that you get when, say, you flick the edge of a wine glass with a fingernail. That’s what keeps me going.”

more info

source: “The Art of Fiction No. 200,” interviewed by Belinda McKeon, in Issue 188 of The Paris Review, 2009.

category: , , , ,

medium: interview

notes: view transcript here

“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.”

more info

source: “The Art of Fiction No. 200,” interviewed by Belinda McKeon, in Issue 188 of The Paris Review, 2009.

category: , , ,

medium: interview

notes: view transcript here

via: Bill Roorbach
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