"Doing what you do well is death. Your duty is to keep trying to do things that you don't do well, in the hope of learning."

--

Source : "John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200". Interview with Belinda McKeon, The Paris Review, Issue 188, www.theparisreview.org. Spring 2009.

John Banville

#Trying Quotes #Keep Trying Quotes #Duty Quotes

“It is easier to silence scientific dissent by utilizing the politics of personal destruction, than to actually debate them on the merits of their arguments. That should tell you something about the global warming debate...there is none right now....it's either you believe, or you are to be discredited.”
“I read once that the voice is a mirror of our inner being. I can very much relate to that because, when you sing, you feel very exposed. You feel like you can’t hide anything. But then it also works the other way round and, when we work on our voice, our inner being also changes.”
“To secure peace is to prepare for war.”
“To me, being Australian is about looking after your mates, taking care of the less fortunate, supporting the underdog and enhancing the spirit that makes all Australians unique.”
“I think actors make the mistake of finding their little niche in the business and once they try to do something a little darker, boom, they get slapped across the face for it, so they go back to what they did before.”
“It's only a sure defeat when you stop trying.”
“But naturalists are now beginning to look beyond this, and to see that there must be some other principle regulating the infinitely varied forms of animal life.”

Source : Alfred Russel Wallace (2016). “Travels on the Amazon”, p.61, Library of Alexandria
“There is something called the rapture of the deep, and it refers to what happens when a deep-sea diver spends too much time at the bottom of the ocean and can't tell which way is up. When he surfaces, he's liable to have a condition called the bends, where the body can't adapt to the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. All of this happens to me when I surface from a great book.”

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