Russell Banks Quotes
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.

Quotes to Explore
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There will be statues of Bill Gates across the Third World. There's a reasonable shot that - because of his money - we will cure malaria.
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I've known Bezos for decades, since the very early days of Amazon, so it's no surprise to me that he's smart or willing to make big bets.
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Scratch a Yale man with both hands and you'll be lucky to find a coast-guard. Usually you find nothing at all.
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I enjoy building more than managing.
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A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.
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There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.
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No ideas and the ability to express them - that's a journalist.
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When we show up in a city, we ask, 'Where's the best restaurant? What's the best beer?' You start doing that, and you get exposed to a lot of great stuff.
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We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough.
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I shampoo every other day and only do the roots. I can't shampoo all the way down to the end, because it will dry my hair out. I use a mask multiple times a week to restore moisture.
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Although I come from a family who are Muslim - my mother is Egyptian, my father is Palestinian - my mother only puts a veil on her head when she has a bad hair day.
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As time went on, we formed a number of different bands. We played in rival, neighborhood bands. We learned more songs and we learned how to play Chuck Berry music and we learned Ventures songs.
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Jazz scares me. I've witnessed so many incredible singers and jazz musicians. Pop and soul music have always been the things that I felt like I could do.
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I starved and slept on park benches. I wrapped myself in the pages of my manuscript to keep warm. For two and a half years I took odd jobs; nothing was going to deter me.
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I'm not just a big-haired redhead country singer who dresses flamboyantly, has this wicked sense of humor and wears rhinestones.
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Conservatives like to insist that their judges are strict constructionists, giving the Constitution and statutes their precise meaning and no more, while judges like Ms. Sotomayor are activists. But there is no magic right way to interpret terms like 'free speech' or 'due process' - or potato chip.
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I know the situations that we do every week are all ones that I encounter in my life or will encounter.
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Since President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, the gap between men and women's earnings has narrowed by less than a half-cent per year. At this rate, American women will have to wait until 2062 to bring home the same salary as their male counterparts.
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Unless we believe that God renews creation every day, our prayers grow habitual and tedious.
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Religion and gods and beliefs - for me, it all comes down to your brother. And your brother might be the brother in your family, or it might be the guy next to you in the foxhole - it's about human connections.
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All my life, my girlfriends are always skinny. Beauty in art has nothing to do with beauty in reality. Why do you like primitive art? Because there is beauty in the deformity. Sometimes paintings that people consider realistic are not at all. Raphael figures look realistic, but in real life, they were deformed.
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It's a perfectly valid position to not like Shakespeare.
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Honesty stands at the gate and knocks, and bribery enters in.
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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.