“Doing what you do well is death. Your duty is to keep trying to do thi...” — John Banville Quote

Doing what you do well is death. Your duty is to keep trying to do things that you don't do well, in the hope of learning.

The Booker Prize is a big, popular prize for big, popular books, and that's the way it should be.

I don't know if there is a personal identity. We all imagine that we are absolute individuals. But when we begin to look for where this individuality resides, it's very difficult to find.

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.

It's great people still care about books, and it's great you can still fashion a life from literature.

My passion is writing, but it is also a fight because I still see home as a woman's duty.

The respect and protection of woman and of maternity should be raised to the position of an inalienable social duty and should become one of the principles of human morality.

Me and my husband think the internet is a really positive thing. We know games that have taught our children problem-solving skills but that doesn't mean we are going to say play 'Call of Duty.'

I feel like it's a duty of mine to make sure that I'm helping out as much as I can, knowing that it's a responsibility.

He who has mingled in the fray of duty that the brave endure, must have made foes. If you have none, small is the work that you have done.