Russell Hoban famous quotes

03-28-2025

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

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

#History #Effort #Language
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

#Inspirational #People #Language
Too-lateness, I realized, has nothing to do with age. Itâ€™s a relation of self to the moment. Or not, depending on the person and the moment. Perhaps there even comes a time when itâ€™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 itâ€™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

#Self #Long #Age
Explorers have to be ready to die lost.
-- Russell Hoban

#Lost #Ready #Explorers
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. Women know where it lives but they can let it alone.
-- Russell Hoban

#Men #Thinking #Differences
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

#Violence #Violent #Situation
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

#Baby #Art #Philosophy
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

#Art #Philosophy #History
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

#Art #Philosophy #History
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

#Moving #Sunday #Sometimes
Them as counts counts moren them as dont count
-- Russell Hoban

#Numbers #Mathematics
More and more I'm aware that the permutations are not unlimited.
-- Russell Hoban

#Mathematics #Unlimited
I believe that most of us would like to be thought well of by horses.
-- Russell Hoban

#Horse #Believe #I Believe
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

#Zoos #Freedom #Animal
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

#Dark #Reflection #Night
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

#Mother #Singing #Thursday
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

#Men #Worry #Suffering
A family is everybody all together.
-- Russell Hoban

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

#Silly #Loss #Animal
What a weird thing smoking is and I can't stop it. I feel cosy, have a sense of well-being when I'm smoking, poisoning myself, killing myself slowly. Not so slowly maybe. I have all kinds of pains I don't want to know about and I know that's what they're from. 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.
-- Russell Hoban

#Pain #Smoking #Want
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.
-- Russell Hoban

#Smoking #Killing #Feels
Is there an existence that is only mine?
-- Russell Hoban

#Conformity #Existence #Non Conformity
It's almost as if we're put here on earth to show how silly they aren't.
-- Russell Hoban

#Silly #Animal #Earth
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

#God #Eye #Ideas
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

#Mother #Hurt #Father
The things that matter don't necessarily make sense.
-- Russell Hoban

#Matter #Things That Matter #Make Sense

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