Rule of the Bone Quotes

“But when you’re a kid it’s like you’re wearing these binoculars strapped to your eyes and you can’t see anything except what’s in the dead center of the lenses”
― Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone

“It was strange to stand there in front of the mirror and see myself like I was my own best friend, a kid wanted to hang with forever. This was a boy I could travel to the seacoasts with, a boy I'd like to meet up with in foreign cities like Calcutta and London and Brazil, a boy I could trust who also had a good sense of humor and liked smoked oysters from a can and good weed and the occasional 40 ounces of malt. If I was going to be alone for the rest of my life this was the person I wanted to be alone with.”
― Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone

“It's like a crime is an act that when you've committed one the act is over and you haven't changed inside. But when you commit a sin it's like you create a condition that you have to live in.”
― Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone

“They were totally alone, those kids, like each had been accidentally sent to earth from a distant planet to live among adult humans and be dependent on them for everything because compared to the adult humans they were extremely fragile creatures and didn't know the language or how anything here worked and hadn't arrived with any money. And because they were like forbidden by the humans to use their old language they'd forgotten it so they couldn't be much company or help to each other either. They couldn't even talk about the old days and so pretty soon they forgot there ever were any old days and all there was now was life on earth with adult humans who called them children and acted toward them like they owned them and like they were objects not living creatures with souls.”
― Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone

“They were the only three people I'd chosen on my own to love, and they were gone. But still, that morning in Mobay when I saw Russ for the last time, I saw clearly for the first time that loving Sister Rose and I-Man and even Bruce had left me with riches that I could draw on for the rest of my life, I was totally grateful to them.”
― Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone

“I remember thinking you live from moment to moment and the moments all flow into one another forwards and backwards and you almost never catch one like this that’s separate from the rest.”
― Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone

“she didn’t have any more words left inside her that were strong enough to block out the words coming from outside and I wondered what her thoughts were like when she was alone. She was like an actress who was playing a bunch of different people in a bunch of different plays all at the same time.”
― Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone: A Modern Classic of American Literature – A Coming-of-Age Journey from Homelessness to Jamaica

“to not have to be an American white kid worshiping the god of your parents which is why the Haile Selassie stuff got overlooked by them but it was important.”
― Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone: A Modern Classic of American Literature – A Coming-of-Age Journey from Homelessness to Jamaica

“I’m thinking, Bone, man, wherever you were before you’re on the other side now.”
― Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone

“Plus when you get down to important moments in life like this your upbringing always seems to kick into over-drive no matter what religion or philosophy you happen to prefer as an adult or as an older kid like me. In a crunch us Christians like to think God even sets the price of airline tickets.”
― Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone

“I remember thinking you live from moment to moment and the moments all flow into one another forwards and backwards and you almost never catch one like this that’s separate from the rest. It felt like a precious diamond and I was holding it up to the sunlight between my thumb and forefinger and all these cold blue and white and gold colored sparks of light were jumping off of it.”
― Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone

“It’s funny about religion, whether it’s the religion of white Rasta kids or even my own mom it’s usually got some other point than thanks and praise. For the people doing the thanking and praising, I mean.”
― Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone

“It was like I really was invisible or something and no one could see me. No, actually it was more like I was this human mirror walking down the road and all people could see when they looked in my direction with some reflection of themselves looking back because the main effect was no one saw me myself, the kid, Chappie, Bone even, no one saw me except as a way to satisfy their desires or meet their needs, the nature of which sometimes they didn’t even know about until I showed up on the scene…”
― Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone