Mostly we’re motivated to control ourselves in public. Mostly. At home the motivation is much less clear. At home there’s a bit of a lab for bad behavior.
BEN MARCUSThe common, the quotidian, is so much more unyielding to me, really stubborn and hard to work with, and I like this because it makes me think and it makes me worry. I can’t just plunge my hand into the meat of it. I need new approaches.
More Ben Marcus Quotes
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I’m attracted to how fraught the parent-child relationship is, swerving so easily between love and hostility, with almost no plausible way to end, unless someone dies.
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Sorry, I said to myself, wondering how many times in my marriage I’d said that, how many times I’d meant it, how many times Claire had actually believed it, and, most important, how many times the utterance had any impact whatsoever on our dispute. What a lovely chart one could draw of this word Sorry.
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Suspense left my life a long time ago, now it has returned. I do not care for it.
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I’m interested in the hope we invest in science, and the disappointment we can feel when science flattens, or ‘explains,’ the larger mysteries of religion.
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Being with him was like being alone underwater – everything was slow; nothing counted; I could not be harmed; I would feel dry and cold when I resurfaced.
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It’s lonely to listen to the pleasure of others, not that I’ve made a habit of that kind of eavesdropping. There’s joy and passion in the next room, in the next bed, but it’s not yours.
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When I started writing at 18 or 19, I had a fear of anything autobiographical, but I’ve come to realise that my writing is very autobiographical at the emotional level.
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Spelling is a way to make words safe, at least for now, until another technology appears to soften attacks launched from the mouth.
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My goal, with whatever I’m working on, is to lose track of time.
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Among other things, autoimmune disorders are an induction into a world of unstable information and no reliable expertise.
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I’m an enormous fan of Thomas Bernhard’s books, and I like the relentless feeling in his work – the pursuit of darkness, the negative – and I think in some sense I’ve internalised that as what one is supposed to do.
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In certain strains of Judaism, there’s a profound passion for the ineffable. Contemplation of God is meant to be forever elusive, because, you know, our tiny minds can’t possibly comprehend Him. If we find ourselves comprehending Him, then we can be sure we’re off track.
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I work a lot in the summers. My family goes to Maine, where we have a little house. My wife’s a writer, too, and we can write for six hours a day and then play with the kids.
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My first book, ‘The Age of Wire and String,’ came out in 1995, and it was hardly reviewed at all.
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You can test things out without terrible consequences. Or maybe the consequences are there, but they are deferred, buried, much harder to detect.
BEN MARCUS