Russell Banks
Russell Banks
Russell Banksis 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"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth28 March 1940
CountryUnited States of America
memoir
Much more than memoir; it's history.
wonderful unconscious smarter
There is a wonderful intelligence to the unconscious. It’s always smarter than we are.
motivation real book
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.
chimpanzees
Chimpanzees are endangered. Severely.
agents lawyer dentist
Choose your agent as carefully as you would choose your accountant or lawyer. Or dentist.
believe philosophical waiting
What you believe matters, however. It’s all anyone has to act on. And since what you do is who you are, your actions define you. If you don’t believe anything is true simply because you can’t logically prove what’s true, you won’t do anything. You won’t be anything. You’ll end up spending your life in a rocking chair looking out at the horizon waiting for an answer that never comes. You might as well be dead. It’s an old philosophical problem.
reflection america community
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.
writing intelligent honest
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.
average able dentist
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.
loyalty people kicks
Loyalty is weird, it kicks in when you dont expect it and the people who deserve loyalty least seem to get it the most.
strong confused heart
They were gone and I missed them but even so I was very happy. For the rest of my life no matter where on this planet earth I went and no matter how scared or confused I got, I could wait until dark and look up into the night sky and see my three friends again and my heart would swell with love of them and make me strong and clearheaded.
discipline pals attention
If you dedicate your attention to discipline in your life you become smarter.
kids men boys
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.
fire air water
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.