I don't know if there is a personal identity. We all imagine that we are absolute individuals. But when we begin to look for where this individuality resides, it's very difficult to find.
Interpretation
The quote questions the concept of personal identity and individuality.
John Banville reflects on the complexity of personal identity, suggesting that while we perceive ourselves as distinct individuals, the search for the essence of this individuality is elusive. This contemplation invites readers to think deeply about what it means to be an individual and whether such a defined self truly exists or is merely an illusion we construct.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of self in psychology class.
Why does the past seem so magical, so fraught, so luminous? At the time it was just, ugh, another boring bloody day. But, to look back on, it's a day full of miracles and light and extraordinary events. Why is this? What process do we apply to the past, to give it this vividness? I don't know.
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.
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 a marvelous thing. I couldn't ask for anything better. It's as near to godliness as I can get.
I know some of my memories are made up and they are far more powerful than the things that actually happened. For example, I always remember my brother posting me a copy of 'Dubliners' from Africa, but he says he never did.
How I envy writers who can work on aeroplanes or in hotel rooms. On the run I can produce an article or a book review, or even a film script, but for fiction I must have my own desk, my own wall with my own postcards pinned to it, and my own window not to look out of.
All novels must be autobiographical because I am the only material that I know. All of the characters are me. But at the same time, a novel is never autobiographical even if it describes the life of the author. Literary writing is a completely different medium.
The whole world is not worth one soul.
I have never lived a life so much larger than death. (93)
Non-violence is not a quality to be evolved or expressed to order. It is an inward growth depending for sustenance upon intense individual effort.
Astounded—and indifferent—for he was a man who, in effect, had no ‘day before’.
He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.
Corporations take the humanity out of trade - they take the happiness out and replace it with something that is ugly.
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