“ A więc, panie doktorze - odezwała się trochę za głośno, radosnym, zdecydowanym tonem gwiazdy filmowej z lat czterdziestych - to wyrok śmierci czy dożywocie? John Banville
“ There was a time when I quite liked what I saw in the looking-glass, but not anymore. Now I’m startled, and more than startled, by the visage that so abruptly appears there, never at all the one that… John Banville
“ Years ago, he shaved off his beard, without telling her, just appeared at the breakfast table one morning with half his face missing, or so it seemed to her in the first, shocked moment of seeing him.… John Banville
“ Być może całe życie jest zaledwie długim przygotowaniem do chwili, w której się z nim rozstajemy. John Banville
“ Although it was autumn and not summer the dark-gold sunlight and the inky shadows, long and slender in the shape of felled cypresses, were the same, and there was the same sense of everything drenched… John Banville
“ We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations. John Banville
“ Remember what April was like when we were young, that sense of liquid rushing and the wind taking blue scoops out of the air and the birds beside themselves in the budding trees? John Banville
“ Where did this absurd rule come from, and why did we so meekly obey it? Under a tyrannical regime--and the Ireland of those days was a spiritual tyranny--the populace becomes so cowed that it does the… John Banville
“ He knows that after him everything will continue on much as before, except that there will be a minuscule absence, a barely detective gap in the so-called grand scheme, one unit fewer now. Or not even… John Banville
“ Still the dream persists, suppressed but always there, that somehow by some miraculous effort of the heart what was done could be undone. What form would such atonement take that would turn back time… John Banville
“ I had never liked, even feared a little, this wild reach of marsh and mud flats where everything seemed turned away from the land, looking off desperately toward the horizon as if in mute search for a… John Banville
“ A teraz, już po wszystkim, coś nowego się zaczęło, nowego dla mnie - trudna sztuka życia po śmierci. John Banville
“ For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them. John Banville
“ How flat all sounds are at the seaside, flat and yet emphatic, like the sound of gunshots heard at a distance. John Banville
“ Together they will spend a happy hour seated side by side..., while Ivy's tender hand guides Duffy's as he traces out laboriously, in pencil, over and over until he has them off pat, the magic letters… John Banville
“ What a little vessel of sadness we are, sailing in this muffled silence through the autumn dark. John Banville
“ At thee seaside all is narrow horizontals, the world reduced to a few long straight lines pressed between earth and sky. John Banville
“ … убеждението, което ние всички храним на тази възраст, че семействата на нашите приятели са много симпатични, по-приятни и интересни – с една дума, по-желани, – отколкото нашите собствени? John Banville
