Russell Banks Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I think in every picture that I've ever made. Everything that I've done torments me. I really would like another chance except I'd be too embarrassed to ever really try to do them again and no one would want to see the same movie just done differently.
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So many people witness atrocities and can't take their eyes away from them, but that doesn't mean they're good.
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As a kid growing up - I can see now - it didn't matter what I did, as long as it was something I could be really good at. Cycling just happened to be the opportunity that came along.
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I was embarrassed about modeling. When you're at school and you're modeling, it sounds very glamorous, but I didn't want to do things that no one else was doing. I didn't want to be the odd one out. I wanted to be part of the gang.
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Could it think, the heart would stop beating.
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I was in prison with the assassins of the former president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, who was killed in 1981. Those who weren't executed in that case were given life sentences, and two of those were with me in prison.
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We write the song, then it gets played for the artist, and they somehow fall in love with it and go back in and make it their own.
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I arrived in the U.S.A. in 1935, to San Francisco. I got the boat from China, and I didn't even speak English. I could read a little, perhaps write a little, but that was all. It was a 17-day journey, and I learnt to speak English from the stewards.
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The bulk of my learning - if I may call it such - has come within the past three months, after I became a part of the fragile body of patients who make up an AIDS hospice. Here, surrounded by teams of supportive nurses, attentive doctors, and interns, one gently comes upon his own strengths and shortcomings.
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It has something to do with the facts and the law and who the judges are. So I think lawyers sometimes exaggerate their role in winning and losing. Lawyers do have a role, and a major role, but they're not the only players in this game.
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I am essentially someone who comes from the theatre. I love the theatre. Unfortunately, theatre doesn't pay the bills. Only in theatre abroad, I get a wage.
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Smoke the pipe of peace, bury the tomahawk, and become one nation.
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Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.
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We'll always need energy. We need to communicate, too, but we're not stuck with hand gestures and smoke signals. There are better ways to power our future than by digging fossil fuel from the ground and setting it on fire.
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It was in 1969 that I was able to give up my administrative responsibility. As I worked hard my research never suffered during this period and as a matter of fact these were probably some of my most productive years.
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I'd rather go to sleep than find a girl.
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Once the inspiration comes, that directs where the perspiration goes.
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That authorization was based on an intelligence community assessment of a serious and continuing threat to the homeland. The lawfulness of the actual authorization was reviewed by lawyers at the Department of Justice and the White House, and was approved by the attorney general.
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I do not love the sea. The look of it is disquieting. There is something in the very sound of it that stirs the premonition felt while we listen to noble music; we become inexplicably troubled.
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If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.
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Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone.
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Humans are not machines-we are something more. We have feeling and experience. Material comforts are not sufficient to satisfy us. We need something deeper-human affection.
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They looked at each other. Like they knew everything about each other. Like that. But what exactly did they know, these strangers who were so familiar and intimate? You fought a war with someone, and you knew them. But you only knew the part that was in the war, the part that knew how to fight. The other part, the pedestrian part that lived in the endless calmness of days, you didn’t know that part.
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But on the other hand, I don't actively seek out stories or hunt them down.