Russell Banks

“...believes in God the way he believes in politicians-he knows He exists but doesn't count on Him for anything.”

“One hates a person for the same reason one loves him ”

“Knowledge of the facts of Bob's life and death changes nothing in the world. Our celebrating his life and grieving over his death, however, will. Good cheer and mournfulness over lives other than our own, even wholly invented lives - no, especially wholly invented lives - deprive the world as it is of some of the greed it needs to continue to be itself. Sabotage and subversion, then, are this book's objectives. Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is.”

“La différence, évidemment, était qu'ils avaient appris plusieurs siècles auparavant quelque chose que moi, descendant d'un peuple incomparablement plus favorisé, je n'avais jamais été obligé d'acquérir. Ils avaient appris à survivre. La survie était pour moi un fait qui m'était accordé d'avance, et il était donc plus que vraisemblable que dans des circonstances analogues je serais incapable de survivre. Je deviendrais le vieux bougon, l'homme amer qui marche les yeux rivés au sol, le pessimiste qui prophétise partout le désastre et l'échec qu'il appelle de ses voeux ; je serais le suicidaire qui veut entraîner les autres dans sa chute. Il n'y avait pas de place, dans ma culture, pour le genre d'optimisme qui les protégeait dans leur monde, et il ne semblait pas y avoir de place, dans leur culture, pour le genre de rigueur, de complétude et de recherche de symétrie dont je pensais qu'elles me préservaient au sein du mien. (p.223)”

“Bien que Terron fût un homme qu'apparemment je ne pouvais appeler autrement qu'un fanatique religieux ; bien qu'il menât sa vie d'une manière qui m'était encore plus étrangère que celle de M. Mann ; et bien que souvent je fusse arrivé à conclure, presque contre ma volonté, qu'il n'était qu'un arnaqueur rusé de campagne en train d'exploiter mon curieux mélange de culpabilité (le raciste américain en moi) et d'amour pour l'ésotérique (l'intellectuel branché en moi), il semblait malgré tout capable de me prévoir, de connaître bien plus précisément que le vieil homme mes besoins, mes questions et mes inquiétudes. De fait, c'était cette capacité d'anticiper sur moi et le bien-être qu'elle me procurait qui me ramenaient sans cesse à croire qu'il était en train de me rouler. En tant que vieux puritain, je me devais de me méfier de tout ce qui m'apportait du bien-être. (p. 201)”

“Accordons-lui une plus grande capacité à comprendre et à parler le patois jamaïquain, une tolérance accrue pour la flamme vive du rhum blanc, et davantage de respect pour les difficultés qu'on rencontre lorsqu'on veut comprendre quelqu'un d'une autre culture, d'une autre race, d'une autre géographie, d'une autre économie et d'une autre langue - et cela même alors que je me familiarisais tous les jours davantage avec les subtilités de cette culture, de cette race, de cette géographie, de cette économie et de cette langue. J'ai appris le nom des arbres, des fleurs et des aliments qui m'entouraient ; j'ai appris à jouer aux dominos avec autant de férocité qu'un Jamaïquain, et j'ai même appris à parler assez bien avec des Jamaïquaines pour qu'elles puissent oublier pendant de longs moments l'extraordinaire avantage financier que je représentais pour elles, et qu'il leur arrive brièvement d'arrêter de me raconter uniquement ce qu'elles croyaient que je voulais entendre. Ce qui ne veut pas dire que je comprenais alors ce qu'elles me disaient. (p.47)”

“Car, si je considérais l'homme surtout en termes psychologiques, Smith l'évaluait en termes sociaux et Terron en termes mythiques. Ce qui provoquait en moi une quête irritée de certitude, une insécurité qui me mettait nettement mal à l'aise.”

“It was strange to stand there in front of the mirror and see myself like I was my own best friend, a kid wanted to hang with forever. This was a boy I could travel to the seacoasts with, a boy I'd like to meet up with in foreign cities like Calcutta and London and Brazil, a boy I could trust who also had a good sense of humor and liked smoked oysters from a can and good weed and the occasional 40 ounces of malt. If I was going to be alone for the rest of my life this was the person I wanted to be alone with.”

“They were totally alone, those kids, like each had been accidentally sent to earth from a distant planet to live among adult humans and be dependent on them for everything because compared to the adult humans they were extremely fragile creatures and didn't know the language or how anything here worked and hadn't arrived with any money. And because they were like forbidden by the humans to use their old language they'd forgotten it so they couldn't be much company or help to each other either. They couldn't even talk about the old days and so pretty soon they forgot there ever were any old days and all there was now was life on earth with adult humans who called them children and acted toward them like they owned them and like they were objects not living creatures with souls.”

“They were the only three people I'd chosen on my own to love, and they were gone. But still, that morning in Mobay when I saw Russ for the last time, I saw clearly for the first time that loving Sister Rose and I-Man and even Bruce had left me with riches that I could draw on for the rest of my life, I was totally grateful to them.”

“It's like a crime is an act that when you've committed one the act is over and you haven't changed inside. But when you commit a sin it's like you create a condition that you have to live in.”

“All those happy, pretty, successful people- he hated them because he knew they didn't really exist, and he hated even more the magazine that glorified them and in a way that made them exist, actors, rock musicians, famous writers, politicians. Those aren't people, he fumed, they're photographs.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Secrets and lies, they eat your insides until all you have left is a hard thin skin that covers you like the shell of one of those eggs you poke a little hole in and draw out its eggy contents before you dye it for Easter.”

“Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is.”

“The received truth of history is shot through and falsified by unknown secrets carried to the grave.”

“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. And it’s why we tell each other stories that we pray will be transformed in the telling by that angel on the roof, made believable and about us all, no matter who we are to one another and who we are not.”

“But when you’re a kid it’s like you’re wearing these binoculars strapped to your eyes and you can’t see anything except what’s in the dead center of the lenses”

“When you have never done a thing before and that thing is not simply and clearly right or wrong, you frequently do not know if it is a cruel thing, you just go ahead and do it. Maybe later you'll be able to determine whether you acted cruelly. Too late, of course, but at least you'll know.”

“Lists of books we re-read and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves”

“my blue eyes peering into their brown eyes and seeing there some essential part of myself, some irreducible aspect of my being, which in turn gave them back the same reflected version of themselves”

“Our obsession with each other was like the isolation that comes with great pain; it was like extreme sadness. Without our children we might have never discovered our differences, which is what has made our abiding love for each other possible.”

“I’ve got nothing against outsiders, per se, you understand. It’s just that you have to love a town before you can live in it right, and you have to live in it before you can love it right. Otherwise, you’re a parasite of sorts.”

“Let the truth take care of itself, I decided. It's done all right on its own so far.”

“No, because I am not a ventriloquist. ”

“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.”

“Actually I dont know if it ever works out unless you are standing in the middle of the street and dont see the ten-ton truck coming and this good guy pushes you out of the way and says its for your own good.”

“Loyalty is weird, it kicks in when you dont expect it and the people who deserve loyalty least seem to get it the most.”

“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.”