Quotes from Russell Hoban

His eyes look as if he's pawned his real ones and is wearing paste.

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.

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.

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

A story is what remains when you leave out most of the action.

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.

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.

What I am is tired of jam.

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

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

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 things that matter don't necessarily make sense.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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'.

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.

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.

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

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.