Russell Banks

Most of us stopped learning very early, and spend the rest of our lives defending that point at which we stopped learning. It's funny, you know, most of the characters I've written about only learn anything as adults as a result of a terrible calamity -- like Wade Whitehouse in "Affliction," or Bob DuBois in "Continental Drift." At the end, yes, they learn something, but it took something terrible for them to learn anything, whereas Bone and Nicole learn early on. You get the feeling at the end of each of those books that those two characters will continue to learn as they go, that it's a process that has begun in adolescence and that will continue as they grow older, even as old people. At least you hope that's true.