Author Novelist American Books Worth 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
Road 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
Age Writing People But really, it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics like Twain who taught me at an early age that ordinary lives of ordinary people can be made into high art. - Russell Banks
Women First 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
So the same cultural and political issues that divided us in 1968 are still dividing us. - Russell Banks
Writing Writer The best thing about writing programs is that it rationalized the apprenticeship of a writer. - Russell Banks
All parents should be aware that when they mock or curse gay people, they may be mocking or cursing their own child. - Anna Quindlen
There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self. - Francis Bacon
The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society - more briefly, to find your real job, and do it. - Charlotte Perkins Gilman