Russell Hoban (1925–2011,) fully Russell Conwell Hoban, was an American novelist and children’s writer. She is celebrated for combining myth, fantasy, humor, and philosophy to explore issues of self-identity.
Born in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, Hoban began writing successful children’s books, starting with Bedtime for Frances (1960,) the first of several picture books about Frances, a young badger. The Mouse and His Child (1967) was one of his most successful works for children, but two years later, he moved to England and turned to adult writing.
Much of Hoban’s subsequent work has a fantasy or science-fictional strand to it, and includes The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz (1973,) Turtle Diary (1975, filmed 1985,) Riddley Walker (1980; stage adaption 1986,) The Medusa Frequency (1987,) Angelica’s Grotto (1999,) The Bat Tattoo (2002) and Linger Awhile (2006.)
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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
Topics: Stress, Worry
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
Topics: Violence
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
Topics: The Past, Learning, Past
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
Topics: Language
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
Topics: Smoking
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
Topics: Animals
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
Topics: Men, Men & Women, Women
Language is an archeological vehicle… the language we speak is a whole palimpsest of human effort and history.
—Russell Hoban
Topics: Language
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