Russell Banks quotes

And out of a desire essentially to imitate what I was reading, I began to write, like a clever monkey. (Russell Banks)
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. View quote
Russell Banks
The 60s passed and faded and I grew older, and in 1987 bought a house in upstate New York, and it turned out that John Brown was buried down the road from my house and that he had lived there longer than anywhere else and his house was still standing. View quote
Russell Banks
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. View quote
Russell Banks
Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves. View quote
Russell Banks
So the same cultural and political issues that divided us in 1968 are still dividing us. View quote
Russell Banks
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 equivalent to the living earned by the average dentist or accountant. View quote
Russell Banks
A couple of years I taught in graduate programs at NYU and Columbia, in the early eighties. View quote
Russell Banks
What I am finding now is that my audience is getting younger as I get older, which is a very good thing as you know - you don't want them to get older as you get older. View quote
Russell Banks
The United States particularly abandoned Liberia after the end of the Cold War. View quote
Russell Banks
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 of motivation and to show we do things for a complex net of reasons, a real braid of reasons. (Russell Banks)
Nobody does anything for one reason. View quote
Russell Banks
Chimpanzees are endangered. Severely. View quote
Russell Banks
Although I still occasionally paint and draw, my life has now been shaped by my writing. View quote
Russell Banks
Motivations are too tangled and complex. View quote
Russell Banks
And there are people who want to be writers because they love to write. And they care. View quote
Russell Banks
First of all it's usually women who run these higher primate sanctuaries, rarely men. They are white. They come from privileged backgrounds. They are educated. View quote
Russell Banks
The best thing about writing programs is that it rationalized the apprenticeship of a writer. View quote
Russell Banks
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 part of their life. View quote
Russell Banks
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. View quote
Russell Banks
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)
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. View quote
Russell Banks
But on the other hand, I don't actively seek out stories or hunt them down. View quote
Russell Banks
My major allegiance has been to storytelling, not to history. View quote
Russell Banks
No, because I am not a ventriloquist. View quote
Russell Banks