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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

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Russell Banks
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: March 28
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Newton
Massachusetts
Book
Tried
Reductionist
Real
View
Braid
Really
Views
Braids
Things
Simple
Complexes
Show
Complex
Easy
Avoid
Shows
Reasons
Reason
Motivation

More quotes by Russell Banks

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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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There is a wonderful intelligence to the unconscious. It’s always smarter than we are.
Russell Banks
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Our sins describe us, and our prohibitions describe our sins.
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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Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.
Russell Banks
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One of the most difficult things to say to another person is, 'I hope that you will love me for no good reason.' But it is what we all want and rarely dare to say to one another, to our children, to our parents and mates, to our friends, and to strangers, especially to strangers who have neither good, nor bad reasons to love us.
Russell Banks
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Luck can't last a lifetime unless you die young.
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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It's hard to spend years at a time working in total solitude with no reality-check.
Russell Banks
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Nobody does anything for one reason.
Russell Banks
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I am not a ventriloquist.
Russell Banks
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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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One hates a person for the same reason one loves him
Russell Banks
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Motivations are too tangled and complex.
Russell Banks
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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.
Russell Banks
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I'm seventy-six now. I'm at a stage in my life where I feel a lot of affection and regard for women, and I felt the need to make this clear in some way. I don't know how they'll feel when they read it, but I feel okay about it.
Russell Banks
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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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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 that’s what they are anyhow, grown-up men, and they do it for their entire lives.
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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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