For almost anyone who chooses to be a writer, since so very few writers are able to learn a living from their work that is equivalent to the living earned by the average dentist or accountant.
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 BanksWe know that people we love are both good and bad, but we expect strangers to be one or the other.
Russell BanksThey were gone and I missed them but even so I was very happy. For the rest of my life no matter where on this planet earth I went and no matter how scared or confused I got, I could wait until dark and look up into the night sky and see my three friends again and my heart would swell with love of them and make me strong and clearheaded.
Russell BanksJohn 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 BanksYou go out into the world, you read everything you can read, you imitate the things you love, and you learn how hard it is to do. Eventually, you learn your own vision of the world, you learn your own voice and how to hear it, and you learn to write your own work. Writers today have as many opportunities as my generation did, but they don't see the examples as clearly as we did.
Russell Banks