If you dedicate your attention to discipline in your life you become smarter while you are writing than while you are hanging out with your pals or in any other line of work.

Next quotes

• Russell Banks:

  I began as a boy with artistic talent... as a visual artist... I thought that was what I'd become a

• Russell Banks:

  And out of a desire essentially to imitate what I was reading, I began to write, like a clever monk

• Russell Banks:

  Although I still occasionally paint and draw, my life has now been shaped by my writing.

• Russell Banks:

  But really, it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics

• Russell Banks:

  For almost anyone who chooses to be a writer, since so very few writers are able to learn a living

• Russell Banks:

  It's hard to spend years at a time working in total solitude with no reality-check.

• Russell Banks:

  Storytelling is an ancient and honorable act. An essential role to play in the community or tribe.

• Russell Banks:

  John Brown first swam into my vision in the 1960s when I was a political activist in the civil righ

• Russell Banks:

  The 60s passed and faded and I grew older, and in 1987 bought a house in upstate New York, and it t

• Russell Banks:

  But on the other hand, I don't actively seek out stories or hunt them down.