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.
John BanvilleRead
Most crime fiction, no matter how 'hard-boiled' or bloodily forensic, is essentially sentimental, for most crime writers are disappointed romantics.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Crime fiction often reflects a deeper emotional truth beneath its surface of violence.
John Banville suggests that despite the gritty and violent facade of crime fiction, it often harbors a sentimental core. He posits that many crime writers, while portraying dark and intricate narratives, are fundamentally romantics at heart, yearning for deeper connections and truths amidst the chaos of their stories.
Themes
Crime FictionSentimentalRomanticsLiteratureEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
In a book club discussion about literary themes.
More from John Banville
All quotes βWhy does the past seem so magical, so fraught, so luminous? At the time it was just, ugh, another boring bloody day. But, to look back on, it's a day full of miracles and light and extraordinary events. Why is this? What process do we apply to the past, to give it this vividness? I don't know.
John BanvilleRead
Happiness was different in childhood. It was so much then a matter simply of accumulation, of taking things - new experiences, new emotions - and applying them like so many polished tiles to what would someday be the marvellously finished pavilion of the self.
John BanvilleRead
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.
John BanvilleRead
I know some of my memories are made up and they are far more powerful than the things that actually happened. For example, I always remember my brother posting me a copy of 'Dubliners' from Africa, but he says he never did.
John BanvilleRead
How I envy writers who can work on aeroplanes or in hotel rooms. On the run I can produce an article or a book review, or even a film script, but for fiction I must have my own desk, my own wall with my own postcards pinned to it, and my own window not to look out of.
John BanvilleRead
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I am trying to make clear through my writing something which I believe: that biography- history in general- can be literature in the deepest and highest sense of that term.
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