Russell Banks Quotes

Quotes about:

• I much prefer working with kids whose life could be completely upended by a reading of a book over a weekend. You give them a book to read - they go home and come back a changed person. And that is so much more interesting and exciting.

  Russell Banks

  Book, Reading, Home

  Interview with Robert I. Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. January 18, 2005.

  46 Copy quote

• But really, it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics like Twain who taught me at an early age that ordinary lives of ordinary people can be made into high art.

  Russell Banks

  Art, Reading, Writing

  26 Copy quote

• We know that people we love are both good and bad, but we expect strangers to be one or the other.

  Russell Banks

  People, Stranger, Good And Bad

  4 Copy quote

• Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.

  Russell Banks

  Inspirational, Motivational, Book

  12 Copy quote

• It was strange to stand there in front of the mirror and see myself like I was my own best friend, a kid wanted to hang with forever. This was a boy I could travel to the seacoasts with, a boy I'd like to meet up with in foreign cities like Calcutta and London and Brazil, a boy I could trust who also had a good sense of humor and liked smoked oysters from a can and good weed and the occasional 40 ounces of malt. If I was going to be alone for the rest of my life this was the person I wanted to be alone with.

  Russell Banks

  Weed, Kids, Boys

  6 Copy quote

• Storytelling is an ancient and honorable act. An essential role to play in the community or tribe. It's one that I embrace wholeheartedly and have been fortunate enough to be rewarded for.

  Russell Banks

  Play, Community, Roles

  7 Copy quote

• One of the most difficult things to say to another person is, 'I hope that you will love me for no good reason.' But it is what we all want and rarely dare to say to one another, to our children, to our parents and mates, to our friends, and to strangers, especially to strangers who have neither good, nor bad reasons to love us.

  Russell Banks

  Children, Parent, Want

  "American Spirituality: Tony Campolo and Russell Banks". Interview with Michael Carey, www.abc.net.au. July 19, 2000.

  10 Copy quote

• The way I feel about every book is this: you don't finish it, you abandon it. All of my books have in some sense failed, otherwise I wouldn't write another one. If I wrote the perfect book, I wouldn't have to write again, and I wouldn't want to. That's not true for everyone, but it's true for me. I could walk away then. But so far I haven't managed to do it.

  Russell Banks

  Book, Writing, Perfect

  4 Copy quote

• Let the truth take care of itself, I decided. It's done all right on its own so far.

  Russell Banks

  Done, Care, Take Care

  7 Copy quote

• Nobody does anything for one reason.

  Russell Banks

  Doe, Reason

  Interview with Robert I. Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. January 18, 2005.

  7 Copy quote

• You go out into the world, you read everything you can read, you imitate the things you love, and you learn how hard it is to do. Eventually, you learn your own vision of the world, you learn your own voice and how to hear it, and you learn to write your own work. Writers today have as many opportunities as my generation did, but they don't see the examples as clearly as we did.

  Russell Banks

  Writing, Opportunity, Vision

  Source: therumpus.net

  6 Copy quote

• There is a wonderful intelligence to the unconscious. It’s always smarter than we are.

  Russell Banks

  Wonderful, Unconscious, Smarter

  4 Copy quote

• What you believe matters, however. It’s all anyone has to act on. And since what you do is who you are, your actions define you. If you don’t believe anything is true simply because you can’t logically prove what’s true, you won’t do anything. You won’t be anything. You’ll end up spending your life in a rocking chair looking out at the horizon waiting for an answer that never comes. You might as well be dead. It’s an old philosophical problem.

  Russell Banks

  Philosophical, Believe, Waiting

  4 Copy quote

• Driving home, it's all I can do to keep from crying. Time's come, time's gone, time's never returning, I say to myself. What's here in front of me is all I've got, I decide, and as I drive my car through the blowing snow it doesn't seem like much, except for the kindness that I've just exchanged with an old lady, so I concentrate on that.

  Russell Banks

  Kindness, Home, Snow

  8 Copy quote

• If you dedicate your attention to discipline in your life you become smarter while you are writing than while you are hanging out with your pals or in any other line of work.

  Russell Banks

  Writing, Discipline, Attention

  Interview with Robert I. Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. January 18, 2005.

  55 Copy quote

• The best thing about writing programs is that it rationalized the apprenticeship of a writer.

  Russell Banks

  Writing, Program, Apprenticeship

  Interview with Robert I. Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. January 18, 2005.

  7 Copy quote

• We are not buried in history, but surrounded by it. You can't avoid our behavior being shaped by it, to a considerable degree. We have this fantasy that we are free of history. This allows us not to see the circumstances, the historical circumstances of other people.

  Russell Banks

  People, Historical, Fantasy

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Luck can't last a lifetime unless you die young.

  Russell Banks

  Luck, Lasts, Lifetime

  6 Copy quote

• I am aware of the changes, but in no sense am I believer that we live in a post-racial society. That's a description of our inheritance and that is theirs, which is inescapable. It is doesn't matter if you are from New England or Mississippi. You're an American. It doesn't matter if you are white, black, brown, or Asian. It is part of American society. You'd have to be blind, deaf, or dumb not to know it. The emphasis on color or the fear of it, is all part of the same dark flower. I am trying to point to that and to bring it all the way back from Senegal.

  Russell Banks

  Flower, Dark, Dumb

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• One hates a person for the same reason one loves him

  Russell Banks

  Hate, One Love, Reason

  4 Copy quote

• My major allegiance has been to storytelling, not to history.

  Russell Banks

  Storytelling, Allegiance, Has Beens

  7 Copy quote

• Chimpanzees are endangered. Severely.

  Russell Banks

  Chimpanzees

  Interview with Robert I. Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. January 18, 2005.

  8 Copy quote

• They were gone and I missed them but even so I was very happy. For the rest of my life no matter where on this planet earth I went and no matter how scared or confused I got, I could wait until dark and look up into the night sky and see my three friends again and my heart would swell with love of them and make me strong and clearheaded.

  Russell Banks

  Strong, Confused, Heart

  5 Copy quote

• And there are people who want to be writers because they love to write. And they care.

  Russell Banks

  Writing, People, Care

  Interview with Robert I. Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. January 18, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

• Although I still occasionally paint and draw, my life has now been shaped by my writing.

  Russell Banks

  Writing, Paint, Draws

  7 Copy quote

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