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A story is what remains when you leave out most of the action; a story is a coherent sequence of picture cards: One: Samson in the vineyards of Timnah; Two: the lion comes roaring at Samson; Three: Samson tears the lion apart. That’s a story but actually the main part of the action may have been that there was a butterfly in Samson’s field of vision the whole time. The picture cards don’t show the butterfly because if they did they would have to explain it. But you can’t explain the butterfly.

—Russell Hoban, Pilgermann (1983)

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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, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz (1973)

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She sang the song very softly:

I do not like the way you slide,
I do not like your soft inside,
I do not like you lots of ways,
And I could do for many days
Without eggs.

“What did you say, Frances?” asked Father.

“Nothing,” said Frances, spreading jam on another slice of bread.

“Why do you keep eating bread and jam,” asked Father, “when you have a lovely soft-boiled egg?”

“One of the reasons I like bread and jam,” said Frances, “is that it does not slide off your spoon in a funny way.”

—Russell Hoban, Bread & Jam for Frances (1964)

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Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker:

Its some kynd of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. May be you dont take no noatis of it only some times. Say you get woak up suddn in the middl of the nite. 1 minim youre a sleap and the nex youre on your feet with a spear in your han. Wel it werent you put that spear in your han it wer that other thing whats looking out thru your eye hoals. It aint you nor it dont even know your name. Its in us lorn and loan and sheltering how it can.

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…swimming, swimming, the eye held by the sun, no sharks in the mind, nothing in the mind.

—Russell Hoban, Turtle Diary (1975)

Picture of a passage from Russell Hoban's 1975 novel, Turtle Diary, printed on yellow paper and pinned to a fridge with sea turtle magnets. The quote reads: 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. Sea turtles can't shut themselves up in their shells as land turtles do. Their shells are like tight bone vests and their flippers are always sticking out. Nothing they can do if a shark comes along. Pray. Ridiculous to think of a turtle praying with all those teeth coming up from below. ¶ I think of them swimming through all that golden-green water over the dark, over the chill of the deeps and the jaws of the dark. And I think of the sun over the water, the sun through the water, the eye holding the sun, being held by it with no thought and only the rhythm of the going, the steady wing-strokes of the flippers in the water. Then it doesn't seem so hard to believe. It seems the only way to do it, the only way in fact to be: swimming, swimming, the eye held by the sun, no sharks in the mind, nothing in the mind.

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