Russell Hoban

Novelist

1925-02-04

Quotes by Russell Hoban

• We make fiction because we are fiction ... It lived us into being and it lives us still.

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• Where they gone for the timber it ben a special place of myn. Where the old track sydls the hy groun sholder. It wer woodit with oak there. Hy groun on 1 side of the track and on the other it sloaps off sharp tords Widders Dump. The track runs pas that holler they call Mr Clevvers Roaling Place it wer the track we all ways took going to and from the form. It wer the shape of the groun I liket and the feal of it. That fealing you get on hy groun over looking the low. Some times sydling that sholder youwd see crows be low you cruising. Looking down from there at Widders Dump it seamt so low and little it lookit easy ternt a way from. Back then I never 1ce ben on that hy groun sholder oansome. Never ben any where at all oansome. Never in my woal life put foot outside a fents without at leas 5 more for dog safe. I ben saving up that hy groun in my mynd tho. Thinking may be some time there myt come a time Iwd chance it oansome. I dint want no woodlings cleart there I just wantit that place lef the way it ben. I tol my self never mynd but I myndit.

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• Am I doomed? Flashing darkness is pretty much the same as flashing light really. Fear isn't at all the same as courage but after a certain point perhaps being afraid of everything is the same as being afraid of nothing.

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• Who can know anybody?' said the bookshop owner. 'Every person is like thousands of books. New, reprinting, in stock, out of stock, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, rubbish. The lot. Different every day. One's lucky to be able to put his hand on the one that's wanted, let alone know it.

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• He was thinking what a long and wide thing time is, to have so many happenings in it.

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• Iyther you dont know nothing or you know too much it dont seam like theres any thing in be twean.

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• An ordinary mirror is silvered at the back but the window of the night train has darkness behind the glass. My face and the faces of other travellers were now mirrored on this darkness in a succession of stillnesses. Consider this, said the darkness: any motion at any speed is a succession of stillnesses; any section through an action will show just such a plane of stillness as this dark window in which your seeking face is mirrored. And in each plane of stillness is the moment of clarity that makes you responsible for what you do.

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• Am I doomed? Flashing darkness is pretty much the same as flashing light really. Fear isn't at all the same as courage but after a certain point perhaps being afraid of everything is the same as being afraid of nothing.

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• An ordinary mirror is silvered at the back but the window of the night train has darkness behind the glass. My face and the faces of other travellers were now mirrored on this darkness in a succession of stillnesses. Consider this, said the darkness: any motion at any speed is a succession of stillnesses; any section through an action will show just such a plane of stillness as this dark window in which your seeking face is mirrored. And in each plane of stillness is the moment of clarity that makes you responsible for what you do.

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• We make fiction because we are fiction ... It lived us into being and it lives us still.

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• He was thinking what a long and wide thing time is, to have so many happenings in it.

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• Where they gone for the timber it ben a special place of myn. Where the old track sydls the hy groun sholder. It wer woodit with oak there. Hy groun on 1 side of the track and on the other it sloaps off sharp tords Widders Dump. The track runs pas that holler they call Mr Clevvers Roaling Place it wer the track we all ways took going to and from the form. It wer the shape of the groun I liket and the feal of it. That fealing you get on hy groun over looking the low. Some times sydling that sholder youwd see crows be low you cruising. Looking down from there at Widders Dump it seamt so low and little it lookit easy ternt a way from. Back then I never 1ce ben on that hy groun sholder oansome. Never ben any where at all oansome. Never in my woal life put foot outside a fents without at leas 5 more for dog safe. I ben saving up that hy groun in my mynd tho. Thinking may be some time there myt come a time Iwd chance it oansome. I dint want no woodlings cleart there I just wantit that place lef the way it ben. I tol my self never mynd but I myndit.

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• Who can know anybody?' said the bookshop owner. 'Every person is like thousands of books. New, reprinting, in stock, out of stock, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, rubbish. The lot. Different every day. One's lucky to be able to put his hand on the one that's wanted, let alone know it.

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• Iyther you dont know nothing or you know too much it dont seam like theres any thing in be twean.

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• There are situations in life to which the only satisfactory response is a physically violent one. If you don't make that response, you continually relive the unresolved situation over and over in your life.

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• After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?

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• But when I don't smoke I scarcely feel as if I'm living. I don't feel as if I'm living unless I'm killing myself.

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