John Banville

“I've always been fascinated by physics and cosmology. It gets more and more scary the older you get.”

“With crime fiction, you have to write a half-dozen before they catch on.”

“Most crime fiction, no matter how 'hard-boiled' or bloodily forensic, is essentially sentimental, for most crime writers are disappointed romantics.”

“With the crime novels, it's delightful to have protagonists I can revisit in book after book. It's like having a fictitious family.”

“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.”

“I live in Dublin, God knows why. There are greatly more congenial places I could have settled in - Italy, France, Manhattan - but I like the climate here, and Irish light seems to be essential for me and for my writing.”