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?”

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

“There were times when it seemed the different parts of him where not all under the same management.”

“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.”

“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?”

“The silence sat down with them like an invisible creature with its finger to its lips.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Explorers have to be ready to die lost.”

“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.”

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

“I have forgotten more of my life than I remember, and with my forgetting I have lost my being.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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