“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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“Science! He [Dr. MacBride] doesn't know what Christianity is yet. I've entertained many guests, but none - The whole secret," broke off Judge Henry, "Lies in the way you treat people. As soon as you treat men as your brothers, they are ready to acknowledge you - if you deserve it - as their superior. That's the whole bottom of Christianity, and that's what our missionary will never know.”
― Owen Wister, quote from The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
“Do you want to marry him?" Peter stopped in front of her, pressing close.
"You know I don't."
"Do I? Do we know each other anymore? It's been a long time. I'm not the same person I was."
"You are," she insisted. "I know who you are." She knew it was ridiculous, to feel so strong so fast...but she did. It just felt like they belonged together. She took his hand and held it tight.
His face softened. "All right, then. There may be one way,,,." he said out to the faint silver hue of the moors on the horizon.
Valerie looked at him blankly, her mind racing off on its own.
"We could run away," he said, speaking her mind before she's quite reached the thought. He came even closer, almost touching his forehead to hers.
"Run away with me," he repeated the words, smiling a real smile, full and dark, in that terrifying way he had, as though his actions were self-contained, as though there were no consequences. She wanted to be a part of his ripple-less world.
"Where would we go?"
His lips brushed her ear. "Anywhere you want," he said. "The sea, the city, the mountains..."
Anywhere. With him.
He pulled back to look at her. "You're afraid."
"No, I'm not."
"You'd leave your home? Your family? Your whole life?"
"I-I think I would. Anything to be with you." She heard herself saying it and realized it was true.
"Anything?"
Valerie pretended to think a moment, for show, to be able to tell herself she had.
Then, almost meekly, "Yes."
"Yes?"
"Yes.”
― Sarah Blakley-Cartwright, quote from Red Riding Hood
“The transmission of knowledge is in itself an erotic act.”
― Alan Bennett, quote from The History Boys
“My dad was Callum McGregor. Hanged for political terrorism. Hanged for being a rapist and a murderer. Hanged for being a son of a bitch.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Checkmate
“When I was younger, I used to make resolutions which imagined were virtuous. I was less anxious to be what I was, than to become what I wished to be. Now, I am not far from thinking that in irresolution lies the secret of not growing old.”
― André Gide, quote from The Counterfeiters
Superfudge
Chill of Fear
Deal Breaker
The Silent Governess
Croak
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