Ben Fountain Quotes
-
If a person wants to be of any use to himself, he better insist on getting his fair share of beauty and pleasure, and if there's something about the system that's keeping him from getting his share, then I think he's well within his rights to fight to change that.
→ -
It took me 10 years to write a story that pleased me - that I could look at after it was published and not cringe.
→ -
I thought when I started writing that I'd have a book out in four or five years, and as it became apparent that that wasn't going to happen, I became increasingly frustrated and unsure of myself.
→ -
The funny thing is, about the time I let go of any aspiration toward worldly success, that's about the time I started writing decent work.
→ -
It's amazing what happens when you stick yourself in a place and let things take their more or less natural course.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
Eruptions of talent continue to happen in Haiti, in spite of everything.
→ -
I got brilliant stories from people who'd never set foot in an MFA program and had published very little, and terrible stories from people who'd published a lot and had all the credentials. It was all over the map and that was part of the fun.
→ -
I never listen to music when I'm writing.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
By the end of the first decade of writing, I considered myself a confirmed failure in the eyes of the world.
→ -
You have the mainstream bourgeois life of the U.S., Europe, the "developed" world - the life of technology, education, mortgages, careers, a certain level of physical comfort - while on the other hand, several billion people on the planet exist on less than a dollar a day. That's a huge and terrible reality to get your head around.
→ -
Maybe the light's at the other end of the tunnel.
→ -
I kept going back while I was writing the novel - which never sold, may it rest in peace - and by the time it was finished I had too many connections to Haiti to walk away.
→ -
I started publishing stories in small magazines early on, but after seven or eight or nine years you feel like you need a little more than that to show for your efforts.
→ -
Late bloomer' is another way of saying 'slow learner.
→ -
I'm a writer, not an editor, and though the editing rarely cut into my writing time, it did take away from that walking-around-thinking-about-it-when-you're-not-thinking-about-it time that I think is important for writers. When you're half-thinking about what you're working on while driving, cooking . . . just letting things sift and settle, come to you.
→ -
Somewhere along the way America became a giant mall with a country attached.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
If you could figure out how to live with family then you'd gone a long way toward finding your peace.
→ -
It is sort of weird being honored for the worst day of your life.
→ -
Haiti is unique - the first successful slave revolt in history, the first black republic etc., and then when you get into the culture, the voodoo, and that wonderful synchretization of Christian and African belief and symbology, it's like nothing the world has ever seen.
→ -
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.
→ -
I really had to decide why I was writing. I had no interest in going back to law; I very briefly - for about six hours - considered going to get my MBA, but in the end, I realized that the only work I really wanted to do was write.
→ -
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.
→ -
I quit law in 1988 to start writing, and it took me 17 years from that point to get a book contract. I guess you can say I was on the slow train.
→ -
If you want to write, then write; if you don't want to write, then don't write. I fell into the former category, and I just made the decision that I'd keep on because I liked it and might someday do something decent.
→
Related Authors
-
Simon Beaufoy Screenwriter -
Kevin Powers Writer -
Jami Attenberg Author -
Jennifer Egan Novelist -
Jess Walter Author -
Olen Steinhauer Writer -
Dave Eggers Writer -
Garrett Hedlund Film actor -
Philipp Meyer Fiction writer -
Maria Semple Novelist -
Robert Caro Journalist -
Anthony Shadid Correspondent -
Ernest Hemingway Author -
Katherine Boo Journalist -
Hilary Mantel Writer -
Junot Diaz Writer -
Louise Erdrich Writer -
Ang Lee Film director -
Andrew Solomon Writer -
Claire Vaye Watkins Author