#SA4QE
LightNews LightNews
argawargas.bsky.social
i should probably #SA4QE this. happy 101st russell hoban
argawargas.bsky.social arga warga @argawargas.bsky.social · Feb 17
Ful of the Moon
Ful of the Moon
Ful of the Moon nor don't look back
Folleree Folleroo on your track
Oo hoo hoo
Yoop yaroo
Folleree Folleroo follering you
If they catch you in the darga
Arga warga
February 5, 2026 at 9:27 AM
letterspace.org
“…with all those teeth coming up from below…”

#SA4QE
letterspace.org Robert van Vliet @letterspace.org · Feb 4
…swimming, swimming, the eye held by the sun, no sharks in the mind, nothing in the mind.

—Russell Hoban, Turtle Diary (1975)

#SA4QE
In honor of Russell Hoban's 99th birthday, a passage from his 1975 novel, Turtle Diary, printed on yellow paper and pinned to a fridge with two magnets shaped like sea turtles. Full text of the quoted passage is available here: https://www.letterspace.org/turtle-diary/
February 5, 2026 at 1:28 AM
letterspace.org
A favorite quote from a favorite book by a favorite author on what would have been his 101st birthday.

#SA4QE
letterspace.org Robert van Vliet @letterspace.org · Feb 4
But you can’t explain the butterfly.

—Russell Hoban, Pilgermann (1983)

#SA4QE
A passage from Russell Hoban's 1983 novel, Pilgermann: 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.
February 5, 2026 at 1:26 AM
remotecore.bsky.social
... and the voices and the individual silences of each thing, all of them different, all of them holding a long-departed Now.
The Bat Tattoo - Russell Hoban #quotes #booksky #SA4QE 💙📚 2/2
February 5, 2026 at 12:01 AM
remotecore.bsky.social
I have a Friends card; I like the way they nod me through when I show it: I'm not a stranger. I always feel good in museums. I like the high ceilings and the acoustics, the footsteps...
The Bat Tattoo - Russell Hoban #quotes #booksky #SA4QE 💙📚 1/2
February 5, 2026 at 12:00 AM
remotecore.bsky.social
"'You don't look fine,' I said.
'What I mean is, I don't need help.'
I was about to say that everybody needs help but I decided not to. 'OK, I'll leave you to it then."
The Bat Tattoo - Russell Hoban #quotes #booksky #SA4QE 💙📚
February 4, 2026 at 11:05 PM
wordsshiftminds.bsky.social
The author Russell Hoban (4 February 1925 - 13 December 2011) would have turned 101 on 4 February 2026. May he rest in eternal crystalline vibrations of purple-blue. #sa4qe
A quotation on Death from Russell Hoban's 1983 novel 'Pilgermann'.
February 4, 2026 at 7:30 PM
taxon-rascal.bsky.social
#SA4QE
February 4, 2026 at 2:28 PM
russellhoban.bsky.social
Best sculptural assemblage we've seen so far this year. Hooray for towers of books! #SA4QE
charlienutbrown.bsky.social Charlie Nutbrown @charlienutbrown.bsky.social · 1d
Today would be Russell Hoban's 101st birthday. A great novelist, a great children's author, and a great picture book writer – and always completely and utterly unique. One of my favourites.

#Books #fantasy #russellhoban #UKKidlit #childrensbooks
A pile of books by Russell Hoban
February 4, 2026 at 2:24 PM
daveawl.bsky.social
In honor of Russell Hoban’s 101st birthday, I’m currently rereading his eerie and poetic 1996 science fiction novel Fremder, so I thought I’d share a few favorite quotes from that. #SA4QE @russellhoban.bsky.social
Cover of the first edition of the novel Fremder by Russell Hoban, with a design of green spirals based on the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction. Quotation from Chapter 2 of Russell Hoban's novel Fremder, which reads as follows. You know how it is when you’re sitting in a bar somewhere dark and quiet just breathing in and out and maintaining neutral buoyancy and a stranger starts talking to you and after a while he brings out of his pocket a letter coming apart at the creases; he brings out this letter to show you that at one time he mattered more than he does now and he tells you the story of his life. At first you wish he’d go away but perhaps you say to yourself, Maybe one day I’ll want somebody to listen to my story. Never mind. My name is Fremder Gorn. Fremder means stranger in German. Quotation from Chapter 7 of Russell Hoban's novel Fremder, which reads as follows. Holding on to the world is mostly an act of faith: you see a little bit of it in front of you and you believe in the rest of it both in time and space. If you’re scheduled for a jump to Hubble on Tuesday you believe in you, in Hubble, in the jump, and in Tuesday. Sometimes it was hard for me to believe all of it. Quotation from Chapter 5 of Russell Hoban's novel Fremder, which reads as follows. I think about the dead a lot, their wants and their needs and their unfinished business; I suppose it’s because of the way I came into the world. The dead prodigiously outnumber the living, and although their lives have stopped their action hasn’t; they are with us always, sometimes whispering, sometimes shouting. As a child I used to think about my mother and about her grandparents who died in Auschwitz. And my unknown father, I mostly thought of him as dead too. The dead are with me in the ordinary moments of every day--sometimes I see my hand lift a cup of coffee or sign my name and I feel ghost hands moving with mine, lifting their no-coffee, signing their no-names. And when I flicker they're always with me. Other deep spacers have told me they never dream in flicker--how can M-waves dream?--but I know that I do. I always come out of it with a deep sadness, half-remembering blurred faces. Each of us is the forward point of a procession stretching back into the darkness. And even within oneself, every moment is a self that dies: the road to each day's midnight is littered with corpses and all of them whispering. As I write this I'm listening to Beethoven's F Major Quartet, Opus 59, No. 1, the first Razumovsky, while thousands of my dead selves hum along with it, sometimes weeping for times that are gone.
February 4, 2026 at 1:59 PM
daveawl.bsky.social
Happy 101st birthday to the waves and particles that used to be Russell Hoban! #SA4QE @russellhoban.bsky.social
russellhoban.bsky.social Russell Hoban @russellhoban.bsky.social · 1d
Hoban 101! Today would have been the 101st birthday of novelist Russell Hoban. If you’d like to help celebrate by participating in the annual quotation-sharing event known as the SA4QE, share your favorite quotes from Russ’s books using the hashtag #SA4QE and be sure to tag this account!
A sheet of yellow paper, held down by two turtle paperweights, with a quotation from Russell Hoban's 1975 novel Turtle Diary, which reads as follows. 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. A sheet of yellow paper taped up on the wall above a pay phone. It has a quotation by Russell Hoban, which reads as follows. It is a strange and frightening thing to be a human being, to partake of the mystery and madness of human consciousness. Russell Hoban, novelist, 1925-2011. Why yellow paper? Why today? russell hoban dot org has the answers. A sheet of yellow paper slipped in between books on a library shelf, next to a copy of Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. On the yellow paper it says, We know what fiction is but it isn't all that easy to know what reality is.
February 4, 2026 at 1:10 PM
russellhoban.bsky.social
Hoban 101! Today would have been the 101st birthday of novelist Russell Hoban. If you’d like to help celebrate by participating in the annual quotation-sharing event known as the SA4QE, share your favorite quotes from Russ’s books using the hashtag #SA4QE and be sure to tag this account!
A sheet of yellow paper, held down by two turtle paperweights, with a quotation from Russell Hoban's 1975 novel Turtle Diary, which reads as follows. 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. A sheet of yellow paper taped up on the wall above a pay phone. It has a quotation by Russell Hoban, which reads as follows. It is a strange and frightening thing to be a human being, to partake of the mystery and madness of human consciousness. Russell Hoban, novelist, 1925-2011. Why yellow paper? Why today? russell hoban dot org has the answers. A sheet of yellow paper slipped in between books on a library shelf, next to a copy of Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. On the yellow paper it says, We know what fiction is but it isn't all that easy to know what reality is.
February 4, 2026 at 1:08 PM
remotecore.bsky.social
Suddenly occurred to me it's the 4th. Has anyone done #SA4QE, yes they have.
wordsshiftminds.bsky.social wordsSHIFTminds @wordsshiftminds.bsky.social · 2d
Happy 101st Birthday to the late Russell Hoban (4 February 1925 - 13 December 2011). #sa4qe

@russellhoban.bsky.social
'Door' by Russell Hoban. "Wel wun tym thay foun a key it hadda noat tyd to it the noat sed THIS IS THE WUN."
February 4, 2026 at 12:44 PM
wordsshiftminds.bsky.social
Happy 101st Birthday to the late Russell Hoban (4 February 1925 - 13 December 2011). #sa4qe

@russellhoban.bsky.social
'Door' by Russell Hoban. "Wel wun tym thay foun a key it hadda noat tyd to it the noat sed THIS IS THE WUN."
February 3, 2026 at 7:18 PM
whisperfist.bsky.social
Later the day of my reply, the appended Hoban reference came up.

And a reminder in case @helodare.bsky.social hasn’t been for books yet - hope for photos/description of haul, maybe over weekend.

From Wikipedia:

In 2002 an annual fan activity dubbed the Slickman A4 Quotation Event (SA4QE)… 1/2
November 6, 2025 at 2:01 AM
russellhoban.bsky.social
DIANA SLICKMAN, host and moderator, is an alumna of the Chicago Neo-Futurists, current Theater Oobleck ensemble member, and the creator of the #SA4QE event in which readers publicly share quotations from Russell Hoban’s books to celebrate his birthday each year. 5/6
A headshot photo of Diana Slickman.
February 14, 2025 at 10:16 PM
russellhoban.bsky.social
The Riddley Walker panel will be moderated by Diana Slickman, creator of the #SA4QE Hoban quotation-sharing event, and cohosted by Dave Awl, founder of the website The Head of Orpheus and the Hoban online community. Both are alums of the Chicago Neo-Futurists. More info: russellhoban.org/hoban100/
Hoban100 – celebrating Russell Hoban’s centenary
Artwork by Juan Esguerra Russell Hoban (1925-2011) would have been 100 on 4 February 2025. To mark the date, events and activities are being arranged in February by members of the Hoban community. …
russellhoban.org
February 9, 2025 at 4:29 PM
katelaity.bsky.social
“More and more I think that madness is the world’s natural state and to expect anything else is madness compounded”. #RussellHoban Turtle Diary #SA4QE #Botd
February 4, 2025 at 7:52 AM
russellhoban.bsky.social
A favorite quotation from Turtle Diary that was shared as part of the Russell Hoban birthday celebration in 2022 ... #SA4QE #Hoban100 #BookSky 📚

📸 by Yvonne Studer
Photo of a sheet of yellow paper held down by three paperweights shaped like turtles. The text on the paper contains a quotation from Russell Hoban's novel Turtle Diary from 1975, which reads, I think of the turtles swimming steadily against the current all the way to Ascension. 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.
January 19, 2025 at 12:53 PM
daveawl.bsky.social
So I spent a little time learning how to make custom Bluesky feeds and wound up creating two to start with. The first one, because it was relatively easy, finds posts about Russell Hoban and/or his various books like Riddley Walker, Turtle Diary, The Mouse and His Child, or including the #SA4QE tag.
February 10, 2024 at 4:31 PM
daveawl.bsky.social
"Other nights I have lain in my bed; tonight I hear my footsteps on the road, tonight I put my feet into my footsteps and I go."
— Russell Hoban, Pilgermann (1983) #SA4QE

Artwork: Caspar David Friedrich, Seashore by Moonlight (1835)
February 4, 2024 at 10:24 PM
daveawl.bsky.social
Russell Hoban on the house of one's childhood, as it appears in dreams. #SA4QE
Photo of a single-family house with dormer windows, a lawn, and trees in a dreamlike atmosphere. Text reads, "In dreams one often sees the house of one's childhood. Years and years have passed, one's own children have grown up and gone out into the world; but in dreams the house of childhood is fresh and strong, the smell of its closets, the creak of its floors, the light through its windows and the shadows of leaves - everything resonates in the sleeping mind. Perhaps tonight one will find the lost toy or see more clearly something only half-glimpsed long ago." - Russell Hoban, The Moment Under the Moment #SA4QE 2020
February 4, 2024 at 7:37 PM
letterspace.org
But you can’t explain the butterfly.

—Russell Hoban, Pilgermann (1983)

#SA4QE
A passage from Russell Hoban's 1983 novel, Pilgermann: 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.
February 4, 2024 at 7:00 PM
letterspace.org
…swimming, swimming, the eye held by the sun, no sharks in the mind, nothing in the mind.

—Russell Hoban, Turtle Diary (1975)

#SA4QE
In honor of Russell Hoban's 99th birthday, a passage from his 1975 novel, Turtle Diary, printed on yellow paper and pinned to a fridge with two magnets shaped like sea turtles. Full text of the quoted passage is available here: https://www.letterspace.org/turtle-diary/
February 4, 2024 at 6:27 PM
letterspace.org
I couldn’t remember a time when I had drawn so well or felt so good; I wondered if I’d ever draw that well and feel that good again. Happiness can be unsettling, like catching a baby that someone has thrown out of a window.

—Russell Hoban, Amaryllis Night & Day (2001)

#SA4QE
February 4, 2024 at 4:50 PM