Best 46 quotes of Russell Hoban on MyQuotes

A family is everybody all together.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Explorers have to be ready to die lost.

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

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

I'd always assumed I was the central character in my own story, but now it occured to me I might in fact be only a minor character in someone else's.

I'll never retire. They'll have to take my computer out of my cold, dead hands. I'm addicted to writing. I feel physically unwell if I'm not doing it.

Is there an existence that is only mine?

It's almost as if we're put here on earth to show how silly they aren't.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

Them as counts counts moren them as dont count

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.

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.

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.

The things that matter don't necessarily make sense.

The Zoo is a prison for animals who have been sentenced without trial and I feel guilty because I do nothing about it. But there it was, I wanted to see an oyster-catcher and I was no better than the people who'd caged oyster-catchers for me to see.

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.

Too-lateness, I realized, has nothing to do with age. It’s a relation of self to the 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.

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.

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

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?

(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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

O what we ben! And what we come to!

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

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.

sharna pax and hed on a poal when the ardship of Cambry come out of his hoal

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 matriarchal 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.

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.

Stoans want to be lissent to. Them big brown stoans in the formers feal they want to stan up and talk like men. Some times youwl see them lying on the groun with ther humps and hollers theywl say to you, Sit a wyl and res easy why dont you. Then when youre sitting on them theywl talk and theywl tel if you lissen. Theywl tel whats in them but you wont hear nothing what theyre saying without you go as fas as the stoan. You myt think a stoan is slow thats becaws you wont see it moving. Wont see it walking a roun. That dont mean its slow tho. There are the many cools of Addom which they are the party cools of stoan. Moving in ther millyings which is the girt dants of the every thing its the fastes thing there is it keaps the stilness going. Reason you wont see it move its so far a way in to the stoan. If you cud fly way way up like a saddelite bird over the sea and you lookit down you wunt see the waves moving youwd see them change 1 way to a nother only you wunt see them moving youwd be too far a way. You wunt see nothing only a changing stilness. Its the same with a stoan.

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

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.

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.