Russell BanksIf you dedicate your attention to discipline in your life you become smarter. ✨ Interview with Robert I. Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. January 18, 2005.363Life
Russell BanksWe are the planet, fully as much as water, earth, fire and air are the planet, and if the planet survives, it will only be through heroism. Not occasional heroism, a remarkable in… ▶321Life
Russell BanksLoyalty is weird, it kicks in when you dont expect it and the people who deserve loyalty least seem to get it the most.333Humanity
Russell BanksMuch more than memoir; it's history.357Sadness
Russell BanksBut on the other hand, I don't actively seek out stories or hunt them down.379Thought
Russell BanksThey 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 co… ▶3610LifeLove
Russell BanksPublic libraries are the sole community centers left in America. The degree to which a branch of the local library is connected to the larger culture is a reflection of the degree… ▶318ReadingReflection
Russell BanksOne hates a person for the same reason one loves him ✨318Love
Russell BanksThere is a wonderful intelligence to the unconscious. It’s always smarter than we are.309Sadness
Russell BanksIt's hard to spend years at a time working in total solitude with no reality-check.221TimeTruth
Russell BanksWhat 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 becau… ▶277DeathLifeTruth
Russell BanksI 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 p… ▶226LifeReading
Russell BanksIf 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. 248Life
Russell BanksIt 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 seacoast… ▶204HumorLife
Russell BanksThrough 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.194LifeTruth
Russell BanksChoose your agent as carefully as you would choose your accountant or lawyer. Or dentist.228Politics
Russell BanksMy major allegiance has been to storytelling, not to history.197Reflection
Russell BanksI 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 into reading serious literature.186ReadingThought
Russell BanksA couple of years I taught in graduate programs at NYU and Columbia, in the early eighties. ✨ Interview with Robert I. Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. January 18, 2005.2110Politics
Russell BanksLists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.209Reading
Russell BanksFor 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 o… ▶166Life
Russell BanksBoys 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 that’s what they are anyhow, grown-up men, and they do i… ▶1310Reading
