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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 through heroism. Not occasional heroism, a remarkable instance of it here and there, but constant heroism, systematic heroism, heroism as governing principle.

Russell Banks

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Russell Banks
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: March 28
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Newton
Massachusetts
Air
Occasional
Principles
Remarkable
Fire
Instance
Water
Principle
Earth
Fully
Survives
Much
Planet
Systematic
Planets
Governing
Constant
Heroism

More quotes by Russell Banks

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A couple of years I taught in graduate programs at NYU and Columbia, in the early eighties.
Russell Banks
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I am not a ventriloquist.
Russell Banks
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Our sins describe us, and our prohibitions describe our sins.
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Although I still occasionally paint and draw, my life has now been shaped by my writing.
Russell Banks
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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.
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And there are people who want to be writers because they love to write. And they care.
Russell Banks
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Chimpanzees are endangered. Severely.
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It's hard to know more about a person's life than what that person wants you to know.
Russell Banks
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The United States particularly abandoned Liberia after the end of the Cold War.
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There is a wonderful intelligence to the unconscious. It’s always smarter than we are.
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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.
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Nobody does anything for one reason.
Russell Banks
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One hates a person for the same reason one loves him
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Loyalty is weird, it kicks in when you dont expect it and the people who deserve loyalty least seem to get it the most.
Russell Banks
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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
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Luck can't last a lifetime unless you die young.
Russell Banks
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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
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Motivations are too tangled and complex.
Russell Banks
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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.
Russell Banks
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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