Ben Fountain quotes
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“If you could figure out how to live with family then you'd gone a long way toward finding your peace.”
-- Ben FountainSource : Ben Fountain (2012). “Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk”, p.76, Canongate Books
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“I took two fiction-writing courses in college and majored in literature. I felt that I had a knack though I wouldn't go so far as to call it a talent. But it scared me. I felt it was a childish thing wanting to write and that I would forget about it eventually.”
-- Ben Fountain -
“I think I was lucky to come of age in a place and time - the American South in the 1960s and '70s - when the machine hadn't completely taken over life. The natural world was still the world, and machines - TV, telephone, cars - were still more or less ancillary, and computers were unheard of in everyday life.”
-- Ben Fountain -
“Late bloomer' is another way of saying 'slow learner.”
-- Ben Fountain -
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“I'm ashamed and embarrassed to say that I've read very little of David Foster Wallace's work. It's a huge gap in my education, one of many.”
-- Ben FountainSource : "Interview with Ben Fountain, Author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk". Interview with Teddy Wayne, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 30, 2012.
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“I think if you spend much time dwelling on influence you can get self-conscious about every line you write. That's a great way to freeze up.”
-- Ben Fountain -
“The Kessler Theater is one such gem, an Art Deco beauty … for a slice of real life, there’s always the Kessler.”
-- Ben Fountain -
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“Americans are incredibly polite as long as they get what they want.”
-- Ben FountainSource : Ben Fountain (2012). “Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk”, p.36, Canongate Books
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“The strange, wonderful stories of Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain introduce us to the tremendously gifted Kirsten Menger-Anderson, a writer whose subject is nothing less than the diagnosis and cure of the human malady. We follow twelve generations of New York City's Steenwycks family through their forays into phrenology, mesmerism, radium therapy and similar misadventures, a historically rich narrative that Menger-Anderson delivers in striking, elegant prose and with a sure eye for detail. This is a remarkable debut by a writer to watch.”
-- Ben Fountain -
“I have a horror of being self-indulgent and wasting time, and there is that risk in doing this kind of work. Are you totally deluded in sitting down at a desk every day and trying to write something? Is it self-indulgent, or might it possibly lead to something worthwhile? At a certain point I decided to keep on because I felt like the work was getting better, and I was taking great pleasure in that.”
-- Ben Fountain -
“Maybe the light's at the other end of the tunnel.”
-- Ben FountainSource : Ben Fountain (2012). “Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk”, p.179, Canongate Books
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“You'd think family would be the one sure thing in life, the gimme? Points you got just for being born? So much thick, meaty stuff bound you to these people, so many interlocking spirals of history, genetics, common cause, and struggle that it should be the most basic of all drives, that you would strive to protect and love one another, yet this bond that should be the big no-brainer was in fact the hardest thing.”
-- Ben FountainSource : Ben Fountain (2012). “Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk”, p.77, Canongate Books
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“There was no such thing as perfection in this world, only moments of such extreme transparency that you forgot yourself, a holy mercy if there ever was one.”
-- Ben FountainSource : Ben Fountain (2012). “Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk”, p.77, Canongate Books
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“Somewhere along the way America became a giant mall with a country attached.”
-- Ben FountainSource : Ben Fountain (2012). “Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk”, p.161, Canongate Books
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“It is sort of weird being honored for the worst day of your life.”
-- Ben FountainSource : Ben Fountain (2012). “Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk”, p.109, Canongate Books
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“The smartest thing I did in law school: asking my future wife to go out dancing with me. The smartest thing I did when practicing law: quitting. The smartest thing I've done in writing: following my own head and writing what I wanted to write, and nothing but.”
-- Ben Fountain
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