John Brown first swam into my vision in the 1960s when I was a political activist in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement at Chapel Hill, where I went to university. — Russell Banks Copy Share Image
The best thing about writing programs is that it rationalized the apprenticeship of a writer. — Russell Banks Copy Share Image
“The received truth of history is shot through and falsified by unknown secrets carried to the grave.” — Russell Banks Copy Share Image
“Secrets and lies, they eat your insides until all you have left is a hard thin skin that covers you like the shell of… — Russell Banks Copy Share Image
But really, it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics like Twain who taught me at an… — Russell Banks Copy Share Image
“Let the truth take care of itself, I decided. It's done all right on its own so far.” — Russell Banks Copy Share Image
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… — Russell Banks Copy Share
Although I still occasionally paint and draw, my life has now been shaped by my writing. — Russell Banks Copy Share Image
“my blue eyes peering into their brown eyes and seeing there some essential part of myself, some irreducible aspect of my being, which in… — Russell Banks Copy Share Image
If you dedicate your attention to discipline in your life you become smarter while you are writing than while you are hanging out with… — Russell Banks Copy Share Image
So the same cultural and political issues that divided us in 1968 are still dividing us. — Russell Banks Copy Share Image
“They were the only three people I'd chosen on my own to love, and they were gone. But still, that morning in Mobay when I saw Russ for the last time, I saw clearly for the first time that loving Sister Rose and I-Man and even Bruce had left me with riches that I could draw on for the rest… — Russell Banks Copy Share
“Lists of books we re-read and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves” — Russell Banks Copy Share Image
