I shall strip away layer after layer of grime -- the toffee-colored varnish and caked soot left by a lifetime of dissembling -- until I come to the very thing itself and know it for what it is. My soul. My self.

John Banville
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grassthe world is too full to talk about. - Jalaluddin Rumi
  2. I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts. - Leo Tolstoy
  3. What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul - Victor Hugo
  4. Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth,... - Unknown
  5. Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation. - Jalaluddin Rumi
More Quotes By John Banville
  1. 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.
  2. 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 that, not even an empty space where he once...
  3. In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.
  4. Writing keeps me at my desk, constantly trying to write a perfect sentence. It is a great privilege to make one’s living from writing sentences. The sentence is the greatest invention of civilization. To sit all day long assembling these extraordinary strings of words is...
  5. How flat all sounds are at the seaside, flat and yet emphatic, like the sound of gunshots heard at a distance.
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