I work, and then I leave the office, and I’m with my kids and just sort of enjoy them on a visceral level, and I don’t feel like I’m exorcising my own deep ideas about parenthood and about how my life will come into play in my work.
BEN MARCUSRain is used as white noise when God is disgusted by too much prayer, when the sky is stuffed to bursting with the noise of what people need.
More Ben Marcus Quotes
-
-
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.
BEN MARCUS -
My goal, with whatever I’m working on, is to lose track of time.
BEN MARCUS -
In some sense, prose fiction is just a way of unlocking a space. If I can unlock the space, it comes out and it’s vivid, I find that I care about it, and it’s part of me.
BEN MARCUS -
Rain is used as white noise when God is disgusted by too much prayer, when the sky is stuffed to bursting with the noise of what people need.
BEN MARCUS -
I like big doses of grief when I read: Richard Yates, Flannery O’Connor, Kenzabaro Oe, Thomas Bernhard.
BEN MARCUS -
Among other things, autoimmune disorders are an induction into a world of unstable information and no reliable expertise.
BEN MARCUS -
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 MARCUS -
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.
BEN MARCUS -
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.
BEN MARCUS -
Slamming the book shut produces a wind on the face, a weather that is copyrighted by the author, and this wind may not be deployed without permission, nor may the pages be turned without express written permission.
BEN MARCUS -
Eventually you stop paying attention to your own feelings when there’s nothing to be done about them.
BEN MARCUS -
It amazes me that parents are allowed to raise kids. There’s so much power and often very little accountability.
BEN MARCUS -
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.
BEN MARCUS -
My first book, ‘The Age of Wire and String,’ came out in 1995, and it was hardly reviewed at all.
BEN MARCUS -
Spelling is a way to make words safe, at least for now, until another technology appears to soften attacks launched from the mouth.
BEN MARCUS