Quotes by Russell Hoban

About Russell Hoban:

Russell Conwell Hoban was an American expatriate writer. His works span many genres, including fantasy, science fiction, mainstream fiction, magical realism, poetry, and children's books. He lived in London, England, from 1969 until his death.
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

Sometimes I think that the biggest difference between men and women is that more men need to seek out some terrible lurking thing in existence and hurl themselves upon it. Women know where it lives but they can let it alone.

Russell Hoban

I said, 'Yes theres a lot to look a head to. Like croaking iron at Widders Dump. We do the croaking and they get the iron.' He said, 'Riddley theres other things to do as wel.' I said, 'Yes and they all smel of cow shit dont they?

Russell Hoban

An ordinary mirror is silvered at the back but the window of the night train has darkness behind the glass. My face and the faces of other travellers were now mirrored on this darkness in a succession of stillnesses. Consider this, said the darkness:...

Russell Hoban

We make fiction because we are fiction ... It lived us into being and it lives us still.

Russell Hoban

Who can know anybody?' said the bookshop owner. 'Every person is like thousands of books. New, reprinting, in stock, out of stock, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, rubbish. The lot. Different every day. One's lucky to be able to put his hand on the one ...

Russell Hoban

People who for years had not looked for things in booked found new appetites for knowledge when they spoke to him. To someone who came in asking for the latest novel he might sell not only the novel but a biological treatise on the life of ants, an e...

Russell Hoban

How was I to be a scientist, father Lion?' Science is knowing. What could I have known? Others always did the knowing, knew what was in me, what should come out of me, what was best for me. I didn't know who I was, what I wanted. I know less now, and...

Russell Hoban

All of this comes out of what is now an empty space. There are depths to this. It's a lot to think about. From an empty space the future. If there's no empty space where can one put the future? It all figures if you take the time to think it out.

Russell Hoban

I have forgotten more of my life than I remember, and with my forgetting I have lost my being.

Russell Hoban

There were times when it seemed the different parts of him where not all under the same management.

Russell Hoban

The silence sat down with them like an invisible creature with its finger to its lips.

Russell Hoban

Have you paused to consider that there is no way out? Each way out of one situation necessarily being the way into another situation.

Russell Hoban

He was thinking what a long and wide thing time is, to have so many happenings in it.

Russell Hoban

Too-lateness, I realized, has nothing to do with age. Too-lateness is potentially every moment. Or not, depending on the person and the moment. Perhaps there even comes a time when it's no longer too late for anything. Perhaps, even, most times are t...

Russell Hoban

Nothing to be done really about animals. Anything you do looks foolish. The answer isn't in us. It's almost as if we're put here on earth to show how silly they aren't.

Russell Hoban

But when I don't smoke I scarcely feel as if I'm living. I don't feel as if I'm living unless I'm killing myself.

Russell Hoban

After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?

Russell Hoban

The things that matter don't necessarily make sense.

Russell Hoban

Explorers have to be ready to die lost.

Russell Hoban

When you suffer an attack of nerves you're being attacked by the nervous system. What chance has a man got against a system?

Russell Hoban

Author Bio

  • NameRussell Hoban
  • Descriptionnovelist and children's book author
  • BornFebruary 4, 1925
  • DiedDecember 13, 2011
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionScreenwriter; Writer; Novelist; Children's Writer; Librettist