Russell Hoban Quotes & Sayings

What I am
is tired of jam. — Russell Hoban

Too-lateness, I realized, has nothing to do with age. Too-lateness is potentially every moment. Or not, depending on the person and the moment. Perhaps there even comes a time when it's no longer too late for anything. Perhaps, even, most times are too early for most things, and most of life has to go by before it's time for almost anything and too late for almost nothing. Nothing to lose, the present moment to gain, the integration with long-delayed Now. — Russell Hoban

How do the turtles find Ascension Island? There are sharks in the water too. Some of the turtles get eaten by sharks. Do the turtles know about sharks? How do they not think about the sharks when they're swimming that 1,400 miles? Green turtles must have the kind of mind that doesn't think about sharks unless a shark is there. That must be how it is with them. I can't believe they'd swim 1,400 miles thinking about sharks. — Russell Hoban

Yes thats what I done you sorry sods I over the fents and off with the dogs... — Russell Hoban

If reality had a stage door I'd hang around there to see what comes out after the show. — Russell Hoban

He grew morose, and felt himself half overcome by funk — Russell Hoban

The things that matter don't necessarily make sense. — Russell Hoban

It may happen to me at any time that everything will be just what it is, with no stories in anything. — Russell Hoban

Our woal life is a idear we dint think of nor we dont know what it is. — Russell Hoban

Raining agen it wer nex morning. Theres rains and rains. This 1 wer coming down in a way as took the hart and hoap out of you there wer a kynd of brilyants in the grey it wer too hard it wer too else it made you feal like all the tracks in the worl wer out paths nor not a 1 to bring you back. Wel of coarse they are but it dont all ways feal that way. It wer that kynd of morning when peopl wernt jus falling in to what they done naturel they had to work ther selfs in to it. Seamt like a lot of tea got spilt at breakfas nor the talk wernt the userel hummeling and mummeling there wer some thing else in it. Like when you see litening behynt the clouds. — Russell Hoban

I cud feal some thing growing in me it wer like a grean sea surging in me it wer saying, LOSE IT. Saying, LET GO. Saying, THE ONLYES POWER IS NO POWER
The ruins of Canterbury Castle — Russell Hoban

He's taken half of our savings,' said his mother. 'If we lived without using the savings before,' said Boaz-Jachin, 'we can live without the half that he has taken. — Russell Hoban

Have you paused to consider that there is no way out? Each way out of one situation necessarily being the way into another situation. — Russell Hoban

Before the motorcar replaced the horse, and for some years after there were many illustrators who drew horses with the same authority with which they drew the human figure; now there are very few who can do that. Most modern illustraters fudge a horse the best they can and hope to get on by the technique. — Russell Hoban

Oh, yes," said Mother, "you may be sure that there will always be plenty of chocolate cake around here. — Russell Hoban

When I was a child I had a fishless aquarium. My father set it up for me with gravel and plants and pebbles before he'd got the fish and I asked him to leave it as it was for a while. The pump kept up a charming burble, the green-gold light was wondrous when the room was dark. I put in a china mermaid and a tin horseman who maintained a relationship like that of the figures on Keat's Grecian urn except that the horseman grew rusty. Eventually fish were pressed upon me and they seemed an intrusion, I gave them to a friend. All that aquarium wanted was the sound of the pump, the gently waving plants, the mysterious pebbles and the silent horseman forever galloping to the mermaid smiling in the green-gold light. I used to sit and look at them for hours. The mermaid and the horseman were from my father. I have them in a box somewhere here, I'm not yet ready to take them out and look at them again. — Russell Hoban

The sign said 'The Green Turtle, Chelonia myadas, is the source of turtle soup ... ' I am the source of William G. soup if it comes to that. Everyone is the source of his or her kind of soup. In a town as big as London, that's a lot of soup walking around. — Russell Hoban

The worl is ful of things waiting to happen. Thats the meat and boan of it right there. You myt think you can jus go here and there doing nothing. Happening nothing. You cant tho you bleeding cant. You put your self on any road and some thing wil show its self to you. Wanting to happen. Waiting to happen. You myt say, 'I dont want to know.' But 1ce its showt its self to you you wil know wont you. You cant not know no mor. There it is and working in you. You myt try to put a farness be twean you and it only you cant becaws youre carrying it inside you. The waiting to happen aint out there where it ben no more its inside you. — Russell Hoban

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

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

Here below the surface one studies the depths of TO BE, as manifest in AM, IS, and ARE. And if you don't hold up your end of the conversation I may very well snap you in two. — Russell Hoban

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. — Russell Hoban

Nothing to be done really about animals. Anything you do looks foolish. The answer isn't in us. It's almost as if we're put here on earth to show how silly they aren't. — Russell Hoban

Where are we?' the mouse child asked his father. His voice was tiny in the stillness of the night. 'I don't know' the father replied. 'What are we Papa?'. 'I don't know. We must wait and see'. — Russell Hoban

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. — Russell Hoban

A family is everybody all together. — Russell Hoban

There must be a lot of people in the world being wondered about by people who don't see them any more. — Russell Hoban

My generation was somewhat between things, neither free nor much supported by whatever held us in. — Russell Hoban

Time's arrow points one way only. Even the moment just past cannot be returned to. — Russell Hoban

O yes youwl want to think on that you dont want your mouf to walk you where your feet dont want to go. — Russell Hoban

Destiny is not to be trifled with. Do not commit the tragic error of satisfying present appetite at the cost of future fulfilment — Russell Hoban

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

Life is a process of one goneness after another. — Russell Hoban

Is there an existence that is only mine? — Russell Hoban

Sometimes I think that the biggest difference between men and women is that more men need to seek out some terrible lurking thing in existence and hurl themselves upon it like Ahab with the White Whale. Women know where it lives but they can let it alone. Even in martiarchal societies I doubt that there were ever female Beowulfs. Women lie with gods and demons but they don't go looking for monsters to fight with. Ariadne gave Theseus a clew but the minotaur was his business. — Russell Hoban

Them as counts counts moren them as dont count — Russell Hoban

I have no wisdom and nothing useful to tell you - I only mentioned this because it came into my head. — Russell Hoban

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. — Russell Hoban

Sometimes I think that this whole thing, this whole business of a world that keeps waking itself up and bothering to go on every day, is necessary only as a manifestation of the intolerable. The intolerable is like H.G. Wells's invisible man, it has to put on clothes in order to be seen. So it dresses itself up in a world. Possibly it looks in a mirror but my imagination doesn't go that far. — Russell Hoban

All of this comes out of what is now an empty space. There are depths to this. It's a lot to think about. From an empty space the future. If there's no empty space where can one put the future? It all figures if you take the time to think it out. — Russell Hoban

Shamans wear bird costumes and they fly. Somehow they experience flying. — Russell Hoban

Language is an archaeological vehicle ... the language we speak is a whole palimpsest of human effort and history. — Russell Hoban

I believe that most of us would like to be thought well of by horses. — Russell Hoban

O what we ben! And what we come to! — Russell Hoban

Ready to cry ready to dy ready for any thing is how I come to it now. In fear and tremmering only not running a way. In emtyness and ready to be fult. Not to lern no body nothing I cant even lern my oan self all I can do is try not to get in front of whats coming. Jus try to keap out of the way of it. — Russell Hoban

I said, 'Yes theres a lot to look a head to. Like croaking iron at Widders Dump. We do the croaking and they get the iron.'
He said, 'Riddley theres other things to do as wel.'
I said, 'Yes and they all smel of cow shit dont they? — Russell Hoban

An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some of these eyes we cannot bear to look out of; we blind them as quickly as possible. — Russell Hoban

Time's arrow, we are told, is a one-way thing ... Memory's arrow, like the needle of a compass too close to a lodestone, spins in all directions. — Russell Hoban

Love me or I will kick you very hard. — Russell Hoban

A frightening thought had been growing in me. I'd always assumed that I was the central character in my own story but now it occurred to me that I might in fact be only a minor character in someone else's. — Russell Hoban

Its some kynd of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. May be you dont take no noatis of it only some times. Say you get woak up suddn in the middl of the nite. 1 minim youre a sleap and the nex youre on your feet with a spear in your han. Wel it werent you put that spear in your han it wer that other thing whats looking out thru your eye hoals. It aint you nor it dont even know your name. Its in us lorn and loan and sheltering how it can. — Russell Hoban

(Frances has gotten out of bed again and come to her parents' room ... )
'How can the wind have a job?' asked Frances.
'Everybody has a job,' said Father.
'I have to go to my office every morning at nine o'clock. That is my job. You have to go to sleep so you can be wide awake for school tomorrow. That is your job.'
Frances said, 'I know, but ... '
Father said, 'I have not finished. If the wind does not blow the curtains, he will be out of a job. If I do not go to the office, I will be out of a job. And if you do not go to sleep now, do you know what will happen to you?'
'I will be out of a job?' said Frances.
'No,' said Father.
'I will get a spanking?' said Frances.
'Right!' said Father.
'Good night!' said Frances, and she went back to her room. — Russell Hoban

And now it seems she's on my wavelength. That's all I need. My mind isn't much of a comfort to me but at least I thought it was private. — Russell Hoban

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. — Russell Hoban

People who for years had not looked for things in booked found new appetites for knowledge when they spoke to him. To someone who came in asking for the latest novel he might sell not only the novel but a biological treatise on the life of ants, an ecological study of ancient man, a philosophical work, and a history of small sailing-craft. — Russell Hoban

What is all this talk of elephants and seals?' asked Frog. 'It's nonsense', said the father, 'and yet it's not the child's fault. Our motor is in me. He fills the empty space inside himself with foolish dreams that cannot possibly come true'. — Russell Hoban

I think of the turtles swimming steadily against the current all the way to Ascension. I think of them swimming through all that golden-green water over the dark, over the chill of the deeps and the jaws of the dark. And I think of the sun over the water, the sun through the water, the eye holding the sun, being held by it with no thought and only the rhythm of the going, the steady wing-strokes of the flippers in the water. Then it doesn't seen hard to believe. It seems the only way to do it, the only way in fact to be: swimming, swimming, the eye held by the sun, no sharks in the mind, nothing in the mind. — Russell Hoban

Sometimes there's nothing but Sundays for weeks on end. Why can't they move Sunday to the middle of the week so you could put it in the OUT tray on your desk? — Russell Hoban

If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time. — Russell Hoban

The mouse and his child, who had learned so much and had prevailed against such overwhelming odds, never could be persuaded to teach a success course ... The whole secret of the thing, they insisted, was simply and at all costs to move steadily ahead, and that, they said, could not be taught. — Russell Hoban

Jachin-Boaz was at the age called middle life, but he did not believe that he had as many years ahead of him as he had behind him. — Russell Hoban

I said, 'Then whered the other story come from? ... '
He said, 'It come in to my mynd.'
I said, 'You mean you made it up.'
He said, 'Wel no I dint make it up you cant make up nothing in your head no moren you can make up what you see. You know what I mean may be what you see aint all ways there so you cud reach out and touch it but its there some kynd of way and it come from some where. That place Hagmans Il I use to wunner about it every time we come by it til finely that story come in to my head. That story cudnt come out of no where cud it so it musve come out of some where. Parbly it ben in that place from time back way back or may be in a nother place only the idear of it come to me there. That don't make no odds. That storys jus what ever it is and thats what storys are. — Russell Hoban

When you suffer an attack of nerves you're being attacked by the nervous system. What chance has a man got against a system? — Russell Hoban

How was I to be a scientist, father Lion?' Science is knowing. What could I have known? Others always did the knowing, knew what was in me, what should come out of me, what was best for me. I didn't know who I was, what I wanted. I know less now, and I am afraid. — Russell Hoban

The zoo is a prison for animals who have been sentenced without trial and I feel guilty because I do nothing about it. I wanted to see an oyster-catcher, so I was no better than the people who caged the oyster-catcher for me to see. — Russell Hoban

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

I was on South Bank one day by the Royal Festival Hall. It was a sunny day with a bright blue sky. I was looking up at a train crossing the Hungerford Bridge. Through the train I could see the sky successively framed by each window as the carriage passed. Each window moving quickly forward and away held briefly a rectangle of blue. The windows passing, the blue remained. — Russell Hoban

There were times when it seemed the different parts of him where not all under the same management. — Russell Hoban

The silence sat down with them like an invisible creature with its finger to its lips. — Russell Hoban

If we'd been edible we'd never have lasted this long. — Russell Hoban

Stil it takes you strange walking in your old foot steps like that. Putting your groan up foot where your chyld foot run nor dint know nothing what wer coming. — Russell Hoban

Me, what's that after all? An arbitrary limitation of being bounded by the people before and after and on either side. Where they leave off I begin, and vice versa. — Russell Hoban

I stil aint qwite said how it wer. Not like a diffrent country. It wer mor like I wer behynt the back clof in a show. Thats how it wer. Thru the clof I cud see the other figgers moving I cud see the peopl watching only no 1 cud see me. If I wer a figger in a show what hand wer moving me then? I cudnt be bothert to think on that right then. Theres all ways some thingwl be moving you if it aint 1 thing its a nother you cant help that. — Russell Hoban

I've seen a film in which Dr Lorenz pointed out the difference between two colonies of cattle egrets, one free and one caged. The free ones, who had to provide for themselves, were monogamous and energetic and kept their numbers within ecologically reasonable limits. The captive egrets were promiscuous, idle, overbreeding and presumably going to hell fast. — Russell Hoban

Wel you know 1ce the kids start singing at you thats a cern kynd of track youre on nor there aint too much you can do about it. Making the kids stop singing wont help its too late by then youve jus got to clinch your teef and get on with it. — Russell Hoban

I have forgotten more of my life than I remember, and with my forgetting I have lost my being. — Russell Hoban

There is a tiger in my room,' said Frances.
'Did he bite you?' said Father.
'No,' said Frances.
'Did he scratch you?' said Mother.
'No,' said Frances.
'Then he is a friendly tiger,' said Father. 'He will not hurt you. Go back to sleep. — Russell Hoban

What do you do when you're wound up?' she asked. 'Do you play that drum?'. 'No,' said the child. 'We used to dance.' 'But now we walk,' said the father. 'And behind us an enemy walks faster.' 'That's life,' said Euterpe. — Russell Hoban

People write books for children and other people write about the books written for children but I don't think it's for the children at all. I that all the people who worry so much about the children are really worrying about themselves, about keeping their world together and getting the children to help them do it, getting the children to agree that it is indeed a world. Each new generation of children has to be told: 'This is a world, this is what one does, one lives like this.' Maybe our constant fear is that a generation of children will come along and say: 'This is not a world, this is nothing, there's no way to live at all. — Russell Hoban

Who is Alice?" asked mother.
"Alice is somebody that nobody can see," said Frances. "And that is why she does not have a birthday. So I am singing Happy Thursday to her." - Frances the badger — Russell Hoban

Fidelity is a matter of perception; nobody is unfaithful to the sea or to mountains or to death: once recognized they fill the heart. — Russell Hoban

There were no lions any more. There had been lions once. Sometimes in the shimmer of the heat on the plains the motion of their running still flickered on the dry wind - tawny, great, and quickly gone. Sometimes the honey-colored moon shivered to the silence of a ghost-roar on the rising air. — Russell Hoban

Explorers have to be ready to die lost. — Russell Hoban

We've tried the other way; we've tried making both things and people It, and we've seen the results. — Russell Hoban

A map is the dead body of where you've been. A map is the unborn baby of where you're going. There are no maps. Maps are pictures of what isn't. — Russell Hoban

All roads, whether long or short, are hard," said Frog. "Come, you have begun your journey, and all else necessarily follows from that act. Be of good cheer. The sun is bright. The sky is blue. The world lies before you. — Russell Hoban

A turtle doesn't have to decide every morning whether to keep on bothering, it just carries on. Maybe that's why man kills everything: envy. — Russell Hoban

Dont you know if you keap getting a head of your self youwl jus only fall over your self when you get to where you are going? — Russell Hoban

Mark you that and noat you wel. — Russell Hoban

More and more I'm aware that the permutations are not unlimited. — Russell Hoban

I said, "That souns like the end of the song. What about the beginning?"
He said, "Thats jus it you see thats why he wer too late he never come in to it at the beginning."
I said, "You never sung no beginning if youd sung it he cudve come in to it."
He said, "I never sung no beginning becaws you wont never fynd no beginning its long gone and far pas. What ever youre after youwl never fynd the beginning of it thats why youwl all ways be too late. Onlyes thing youwl ever fynd is the end of things. What ever happens itwl be what you dint want to happen. What ever dont happen thatwl be the thing you wantit. Take your choosing how you like youwl get what you dont want. — Russell Hoban

It was the sort of situation that would be ever so charming and warmly human in a film with Peter Ustinov and Maggie Smith but that sort of film is only charming because they leave out so many details, and real life is all the details they leave out. — Russell Hoban

Looking at them words going down on this paper right this minim I know there aint no such thing there aint no only my self you all ways have every 1 and every thing on your back. — Russell Hoban

Navigare necesse est. Vivere non est necesse.' I've — Russell Hoban

I had a salad. If I were to say that today's tomatoes were an index of the decline of Western man I should be thought a crank but nations do not, I think, ascend on such tomatoes. — Russell Hoban

We can't all be investigating non-coding DNA," I said, feeling an upsurge of gastric acid. "Some of us have to sell bullshit self-improvement courses — Russell Hoban

Seeds blow in the wind and what is earf but a deadness with life growing out of it? — Russell Hoban

But more and more I think that madness is the world's natural condition and to expect anything else is madness compounded. — Russell Hoban

Every body knows Aunty. Stoan boans and iron tits and teef be twean her legs plus she has a iron willy for the ladys it gets red hot. When your time comes you have to do the juicy with her like it or not. She rides a girt big rat with red eyes it can see in the dark and it can smel whos ready for Aunty. Even if they dont know it ther selfs the rat can smel if theyre ready. — Russell Hoban

Words have a life; without response they die. — Russell Hoban