The Elegant Variation: The John Banville Interview (2005):
TEV: So let's touch on each of [your] books, and perhaps you might share a memory, an impression, a sense of how the title sits in your esteem today.
JB: Well, I hate them all, you realize that? I loathe them.
TEV: All of them?
JB: Yes.
TEV: Because you did say —
JB: They're all a standing embarrassment.
Banville also says about one of his novels, “I don't understand why that book didn't do better. I gave them sex. I gave them violence. What more do they want from me?”