# Quote — John Banville, The Untouchable

> All the talk now is of freedom and pride (pride!), but these young hotheads in their pink bell-bottoms, clamouring for the right to do it in the streets if they feel like it, do not seem to appreciate, or at least seem to wish to deny, the aphrodisiac properties of secrecy and fear.

- Author: [John Banville](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-banville.md)
- Book: [The Untouchable](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-banville/the-untouchable.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Banville#The_Untouchable_(1997)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-banville/the-untouchable/all-the-talk

## More from this book

> Man is only lovable in the multitude, and at a good distance.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-banville/the-untouchable/man-is-only.md)

> I suspect that significant first encounters only take on their aura of significance in retrospect.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-banville/the-untouchable/i-suspect-that.md)

> I was pondering the question, which I have pondered before, of whether such great revelatory moments really so occur, or if it is only that, out of need, our lives so lacking in drama, we invest past events with a significance they do not warrant.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-banville/the-untouchable/i-was-pondering.md)