Russell Banks

All Russell Banks Quotes

• 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
• My major allegiance has been to storytelling, not to history. Allegiance
• Through writing, through that process, they realize that they become more intelligent, and more honest and more imaginative than they can be in any other… Any
• For almost anyone who chooses to be a writer, since so very few writers are able to learn a living from their work that is… Able
• Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves. Book
• 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… Any
• If you dedicate your attention to discipline in your life you become smarter. Attention
• Boys like it when you talk to them as if they were grown men—at least he always did when he was a kid—because they pretend… Boys
• We are the planet, fully as much as water, earth, fire and air are the planet, and if the planet survives, it will only be… Air
• One hates a person for the same reason one loves him Hate
• 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… Alone
• Public libraries are the sole community centers left in America. The degree to which a branch of the local library is connected to the larger… America
• 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.… Act
• Choose your agent as carefully as you would choose your accountant or lawyer. Or dentist. Accountant
• It's hard to spend years at a time working in total solitude with no reality-check. Check
• But on the other hand, I don't actively seek out stories or hunt them down. Actively
• I began as a boy with artistic talent... as a visual artist... I thought that was what I'd become and in my late teens drifted… Artist
• A couple of years I taught in graduate programs at NYU and Columbia, in the early eighties. Columbia
• Much more than memoir; it's history. Funny
• There is a wonderful intelligence to the unconscious. It’s always smarter than we are. Always Smarter
• One of the things I have tried to do with this book and with all of them really is avoid that simple, easy, reductionist view… All
• Chimpanzees are endangered. Severely. Chimpanzees
• And out of a desire essentially to imitate what I was reading, I began to write, like a clever monkey. Began
• Nobody does anything for one reason. Doe
• Although I still occasionally paint and draw, my life has now been shaped by my writing. Been

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