“Of all the animals on this planet, we are surely the nastiest, the most deceitful, the most murderous and vile. Despite our God, or because of him. Both.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Cloudsplitter
“If you yourself are not a victim, you cannot claim to see the world as the victim does.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Cloudsplitter
“It was like a dream, a beautiful, soothing dream of late autumn: low, gray skies, smell of woodsmoke, fallen leaves crackling beneath my feet, and somewhere out there, in the farmsteads and plantations ahead of me, swift retribution! Freedom! The bloody work of the Lord!”
― Russell Banks, quote from Cloudsplitter
“You must not obey a majority, no matter how large, if it opposes your principles and opinions.' He said this to each new volunteer and repeated it over and over to him, until it was engraved on his mind. 'The largest majority is often only an organized mob whose noise can no more change the false into the true than it can change black into white or night into day. And a minority, conscious of its rights, if those rights are based on moral principles, will sooner or later become a just majority.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Cloudsplitter
“Father argued that society as a whole must come to be organized on a different basis than greed, for while material interests gained somewhat by the institutionalized deification of pure selfishness, ordinary men and women lost everything by it.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Cloudsplitter
“In some countries, I said to myself, the only life you can properly desire is that of destroyer.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Cloudsplitter
“Poor, deluded fools. Because their skin's as white as the rich man's, they believe that they might someday be rich themselves. But without the Negro, Owen, these men would be forced to see that, in fact, they have no more chance of becoming rich than do the very slaves they despise and trample on. They'd see how close they are to being slaves themselves. Thus, to protect and nurture their dream of becoming someday, somehow, rich, they don't need actually to own slaves, so much as they need to keep the Negro from ever being free.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Cloudsplitter
“We pass between sea and sky with unaccountable, humiliating ease, as if there were no firmament between the firmaments, no above or below, here or there, now or then, with only the feeble conventions of language, our contrived principles, and our love of one another's light to keep our own light from going out; abandon any one of them, and we dissolve in darkness like salt in water.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Cloudsplitter
“John had once said to me, in a complaining tone, that Father had taught us to be afraid of no man except him. And it was true. Father always insisted that we think for ourselves in every way, except when we disagreed with him, and that we hold ourselves independent of every man’s will, except his. He wanted us simultaneously to be independent and yet to serve him. Father was to be our Abraham; we were to be his little Isaacs. We were supposed to know ahead of time, however, the happy outcome of the story—we were supposed to know that it was a story, not about us and our willingness to lie on a rock on Mount Moriah and be sacrificed under his knife, but about our father and his willingness to obey his terrible God.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Cloudsplitter
“By this evening,” he declared, “we will all know who we are and what we’re doing here!”
― Russell Banks, quote from Cloudsplitter
“Thus, until we have truly become a democracy, every American, white as much as black, red, or yellow, lives not in his skin but on it. If one person is called "colored", let all be colored.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Cloudsplitter
“it is when a white person resists the privilege of turning colorless that he frees himself, at least partially from the sickness of racialism.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Cloudsplitter
Russell Banks
Born place: in Newton, Massachusetts, The United States
Born date March 28, 1940
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“She wasn’t entertainment for him. He
didn’t need her to make him laugh or bolster his ego or to figure him out so he wouldn’t have to. A lot of men who said they were looking for a relationship really wanted a combination sex buddy, therapist, and mirror.”
― Eileen Wilks, quote from Mortal Danger
“And so I make a pact with the devil, or in this case, my mommy.”
― Kristan Higgins, quote from Just One of the Guys
“...because "Mommy" is forever. It's such a powerful name. Mommy means "I trust you." Mommy means "you will protect me." Mommy is for shouting when you need someone dependable and for laughing with when you are excited. Mommy is for crying on and cuddling with when you are sad, or giggling and hiding behind when you are embarrassed. Mommy is the fixer of boo-boos and the mender of broken hearts. Mommy is a comfort place - a safe place. Mommy means "you are mine and I am yours and we are family.”
― Katie J. Davis, quote from Kisses from Katie: A Young Woman's Journey of Faith A Remote Village A Love without Limits
“her unwavering confidence in an arm which she believed to be stronger than all others combined could have raised from her sinking spirit.”
― Sojourner Truth, quote from Narrative of Sojourner Truth
“Free will," she agreed, "our greatest gift, the thing that makes life worth living, in spite of all the anguish it brings.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Saint Odd
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A Time to DanceBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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