“I began as a boy with artistic talent... as a visual artist... I thoug...” — Russell Banks Quote

“I began as a boy with artistic talent... as a visual artist... I thought that was what I'd become and in my late teens drifted into reading serious literature.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Every morning, before beginning our day's labor, we gathered together in the parlor for prayers and Father's brief sermon, and even though I had grown long used to these solemn services, they nevertheless uplifted me, as I believe they did the others, and made the day's work easier, for despite my unbelief, the services connected our labor to something larger than ourselves and our petty daily needs. Father's intention, I am sure, was precisely that–to lead us to understand our woodcutting and plowing and constant care of animals, the day-long manufacture of our meals and the permanent ongoing repair of our tools and equipment, and our endless preparation for the long winter, such that we would believe that we were participating in a great cycle of life, as if we were tiny arcs of an enormous curve, a universal template that began with birth and ended with death and which, if participated in fully and without shirking, would lead us to a second and still larger cycle of rebirth and regeneration, to an infinite spiral, as it were. Thus, as the fields were prepared and sown, so too were our inner lives being prepared and sown, and as our land and our livestock grew fruitful and multiplied, so did our spirits blossom and bear fruit, and as we dried and salted and stored our food and supplies in sawdust and hay for winter, so would our spirits and minds be prepared to endure the inescapable suffering and deaths of our loved ones, which would come to us as inevitably as the freezing winds and the deep, drifting snows of winter.”

“Making an album should be an honest experience. It shouldn't be about trying to gauge where popular music is today; it should be about artistic expression and putting down what you want to put down.”

“I joyfully hasten to meet death. If it come before I have had opportunity to develop all my artistic faculties, it will come, my hard fate notwithstanding, too soon, and I should probably wish it later - yet even then I shall be happy, for will it not deliver me from a state of endless suffering?”

“If you're just making people laugh, that can be one-dimensional. You have to bring something artistic into it, so it's working on another plane or is more complex.”

“I don't think perfection is possible. I think you can attempt to reach perfection, but I don't think it's a possible thing. I think perfection is a moving point, and we spend our artistic lives chasing it.”

“Young writers should keep out of pubs and remember that the cliche way of the artistic life is a lie.”