“But when you’re a kid it’s like you’re wearing these binoculars strapped to your eyes and you can’t see anything except what’s in the dead center of the lenses”
― Russell Banks, quote from Rule of the Bone
“They were totally alone, those kids, like each had been accidentally sent to earth from a distant planet to live among adult humans and be dependent on them for everything because compared to the adult humans they were extremely fragile creatures and didn't know the language or how anything here worked and hadn't arrived with any money. And because they were like forbidden by the humans to use their old language they'd forgotten it so they couldn't be much company or help to each other either. They couldn't even talk about the old days and so pretty soon they forgot there ever were any old days and all there was now was life on earth with adult humans who called them children and acted toward them like they owned them and like they were objects not living creatures with souls.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Rule of the Bone
“It was strange to stand there in front of the mirror and see myself like I was my own best friend, a kid wanted to hang with forever. This was a boy I could travel to the seacoasts with, a boy I'd like to meet up with in foreign cities like Calcutta and London and Brazil, a boy I could trust who also had a good sense of humor and liked smoked oysters from a can and good weed and the occasional 40 ounces of malt. If I was going to be alone for the rest of my life this was the person I wanted to be alone with.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Rule of the Bone
“It's like a crime is an act that when you've committed one the act is over and you haven't changed inside. But when you commit a sin it's like you create a condition that you have to live in.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Rule of the Bone
“They were the only three people I'd chosen on my own to love, and they were gone. But still, that morning in Mobay when I saw Russ for the last time, I saw clearly for the first time that loving Sister Rose and I-Man and even Bruce had left me with riches that I could draw on for the rest of my life, I was totally grateful to them.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Rule of the Bone
Russell Banks
Born place: in Newton, Massachusetts, The United States
Born date March 28, 1940
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“And as they had been riding for as many as twenty-four hours and were nervous about missing their stop, some got off prematurely, and, it is said, that is how Newark gained a good portion of its black population, those arriving in Newark by accident and deciding to stay.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, quote from The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
“The time flies. The time flies feed on rotting clocks.”
― Craig Clevenger, quote from Dermaphoria
“Abstinence is perfectly reasonable in theory," Gregory said, "It just doesn't work in practice. It's like dieting. You can go a day or two, maybe even a week. But eventually that pizza just smells too good.”
― Tom Perrotta, quote from The Abstinence Teacher
“Elle: "You really think there's no forgiveness in what happened?"
Nico: "Forgiveness from who, Elle?”
― Vi Keeland, quote from Worth the Fight
“I can’t control the world. I can’t make the world a safe place for my children. They may face trouble and they may struggle. They may even encounter darkness and evil. I cannot change that. That is beyond my control. What I can do, however, is show them that where there is darkness, there is light. Where there is evil, there is good.”
― Bella Forrest, quote from A Break of Day
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BreakableBookQuoters 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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