Quotes by Russell Banks

About Russell Banks:

Russell Banks is an American writer of fiction and poetry. As a novelist, Banks is best known for his "detailed accounts of domestic strife and the daily struggles of ordinary often-marginalized characters". His stories usually revolve around his own childhood experiences, and often reflect "moral themes and personal relationships".
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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...

Russell Banks

But on the other hand, I don't actively seek out stories or hunt them down.

Russell Banks

He said, "Yeah, well, artists are a lot like gangsters. They both know that the official version, the one everyone else believes, is a lie.

Russell Banks

One hates a person for the same reason one loves him 

Russell Banks

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 culture is a reflection of the degree to which the community itself is connected to the larger culture.

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.

Russell Banks

My major allegiance has been to storytelling, not to history.

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.

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.

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.

Russell Banks

Although I still occasionally paint and draw, my life has now been shaped by my writing.

Russell Banks

It's hard to spend years at a time working in total solitude with no reality-check.

Russell Banks

And there are people who want to be writers because they love to write. And they care.

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.

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.

Russell Banks

The United States particularly abandoned Liberia after the end of the Cold War.

Russell Banks

Author Bio

  • NameRussell Banks
  • DescriptionAmerican author
  • BornMarch 28, 1940
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionScreenwriter; Author; Novelist
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship