John Brown first swam into my vision in the 1960s when I was a political activist in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement at Chapel Hill, where I went to university.
Russell BanksWe are not buried in history, but surrounded by it. You can't avoid our behavior being shaped by it, to a considerable degree. We have this fantasy that we are free of history. This allows us not to see the circumstances, the historical circumstances of other people.
Russell BanksThe best thing about writing programs is that it rationalized the apprenticeship of a writer.
Russell BanksWhat you believe matters, however. Itโs all anyone has to act on. And since what you do is who you are, your actions define you. If you donโt believe anything is true simply because you canโt logically prove whatโs true, you wonโt do anything. You wonโt be anything. Youโll end up spending your life in a rocking chair looking out at the horizon waiting for an answer that never comes. You might as well be dead. Itโs an old philosophical problem.
Russell BanksIt 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