John Banville

"Silence contains more truth than words."

"Forgetting is as important as remembering."

"The universe is indifferent to our suffering and joy."

"Authenticity is a myth we cling to desperately."

"Every relationship is a translation of longing."

"Time doesn't move; we move through it differently."

"Meaning is something we impose rather than discover."

"The writer's task is to illuminate the ordinary."

"We are all ghosts haunting our own lives."

"Knowledge without humility becomes tyranny."

"The body remembers what the mind forgets."

"Art requires the courage to fail publicly."

"Happiness is often the absence of feeling rather than presence."

"Every word is a betrayal of what we mean to say."

"Freedom is the burden of infinite choices."

"Imagination is more real than reality."

"The past casts a longer shadow than the future."

"Suffering is the price of consciousness."

"We love what we cannot possess."

"Society is a conspiracy of the articulate."

"Beauty is the most dangerous form of truth."

"The self dissolves the more we examine it."

"Narrative is how we make sense of chaos."

"Solitude is where the self becomes visible."

"Change is the only permanent feature of existence."

"Patience is the art of waiting without hope."

"We are defined more by what we hide than what we show."

"Creativity requires a willingness to betray your principles."

"Time is a narrative structure, not a measurable quantity."

"Power corrupts through the small corruptions of daily life."