Reader

“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 Banville, The Sea

“Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him.”
― John Banville, The Sea

“Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it.”
― John Banville, The Sea

“These days I must take the world in small and carefully measured doses. It is a sort of homeopathic cure I am undergoing, though I am not certain what this cure is meant to mend. Perhaps I am learning to live amongst the living again. Practising, I mean. But no, that is not it. Being here is just a way of not being anywhere.”
― John Banville, The Sea