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
Russell Banks quotes about
american-author career earlier influenced parts writers
I think probably in the earlier parts of my career I was influenced by writers such as Hawthorne and Melville - the American classics.
flip lights
All you could do was flip switches and make lights blink.
american-author hard produce understood work
And of course, it's hard to produce a work at the end of those years of solitude, which may or may not be understood or appreciated.
american-author darkness demanding energy far full lucky stories
So far I've been very lucky in that stories have come to me like a thunderstorm, unexpected, full of darkness and energy demanding all my attention.
funny
That was the funny part of the reading.
american-author book good prizes work writer
The prizes have some credibility, of course. And they do good work for the writer and for the publisher, by winnowing one book out of the pack.
dividing issues
So the same cultural and political issues that divided us in 1968 are still dividing us.
kindness home car
Driving home, it's all I can do to keep from crying. Time's come, time's gone, time's never returning, I say to myself. What's here in front of me is all I've got, I decide, and as I drive my car through the blowing snow it doesn't seem like much, except for the kindness that I've just exchanged with an old lady, so I concentrate on that.
inspirational motivational book
Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.
frustration men sight
When an old man and a young man work together, it can make an ugly sight or a pretty one, depending on who's in charge. If the young man's in charge or won't let the old man take over, the young man's brute strength becomes destructive and inefficient, and the old man's intelligence, out of frustration, grows cruel and inefficient. Sometimes the old man forgets that he is old and tries to compete with the young man's strength, and then it's a sad sight. Or the young man forgets that he is young and argues with the old man about how to do the work, and that's a sad sight, too.
doe reason
Nobody does anything for one reason.
hunting hands stories
But on the other hand, I don't actively seek out stories or hunt them down.
reality years solitude
It's hard to spend years at a time working in total solitude with no reality-check.
agents lawyer dentist
Choose your agent as carefully as you would choose your accountant or lawyer. Or dentist.