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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

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

Prayer Rain Sky
To refrain from storytelling is perhaps one of the highest forms of respect we can pay. Those people, with no stories to circle them, can die without being misunderstood.
BEN MARCUS

Circles Misunderstood People
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

Disappointment Feels Mystery
I like big doses of grief when I read: Richard Yates, Flannery O’Connor, Kenzabaro Oe, Thomas Bernhard.
BEN MARCUS

Bigs Dose Grief
Teaching is all armchair. I learn about writing by writing and thinking about what I’ve written and throwing it away.
BEN MARCUS

Teaching Thinking Writing
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.
BEN MARCUS

Alone Being Like Love Underwater
A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail.
BEN MARCUS

Desperate Failing Language
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

Home Labs Motivation
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.
BEN MARCUS

Joy Lonely Passion
My goal, with whatever I’m working on, is to lose track of time.
BEN MARCUS

Goal Loses Track
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.
BEN MARCUS

House Kids Summer Wife Writing
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.
BEN MARCUS

Book Darkness Negative Thinking
My first book, ‘The Age of Wire and String,’ came out in 1995, and it was hardly reviewed at all.
BEN MARCUS

Age Book Review Wire
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

Emotional Level Writing
To me one of the amazing technologies of writing is the way it can listen in on thoughts. I don’t feel that that’s natural to other art forms in the same way.
BEN MARCUS

Art Feel Listen Technology Writing
A self needed to spill out sometimes, a body should show evidence of what the hell went on inside it.
BEN MARCUS

Body Self Sometimes
Eventually you stop paying attention to your own feelings when there’s nothing to be done about them.
BEN MARCUS

Attention Done Feelings
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

Mouth Safe Technology
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

Dispute Impact Love Sorry Times Wonder yself
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

Consequences Detect Terrible Test
My parents showed me by example that they could balance their work and family lives.
BEN MARCUS

Balance Example Parent
Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same.
BEN MARCUS

Grief Looks Sound
Fiction is too complicated and too elusive to break down into a set of tricks.
BEN MARCUS

Breaking Complicated Down Fiction
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

Book Copyright Permisson Weather Wind
Among other things, autoimmune disorders are an induction into a world of unstable information and no reliable expertise.
BEN MARCUS

Disorder Information World
Suspense left my life a long time ago, now it has returned. I do not care for it.
BEN MARCUS

Care Long Suspense
I love the way dates in a text make us think that truth will follow.
BEN MARCUS

Follow Thinking Truth Way

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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