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  • Ben Lerner Quote - My concern is how we live fictions, how fictions have real effects, become facts in that sense, and how our experience of the world changes depending on its arrangement into one narrative or another.
  • Ben Lerner Quote - My concern is how we live fictions, how fictions have real effects, become facts in that sense, and how our experience of the world changes depending on its arrangement into one narrative or another.
  • Ben Lerner Quote - My concern is how we live fictions, how fictions have real effects, become facts in that sense, and how our experience of the world changes depending on its arrangement into one narrative or another.
  • Ben Lerner Quote - My concern is how we live fictions, how fictions have real effects, become facts in that sense, and how our experience of the world changes depending on its arrangement into one narrative or another.
  • Ben Lerner Quote - My concern is how we live fictions, how fictions have real effects, become facts in that sense, and how our experience of the world changes depending on its arrangement into one narrative or another.
  • Ben Lerner Quote - My concern is how we live fictions, how fictions have real effects, become facts in that sense, and how our experience of the world changes depending on its arrangement into one narrative or another.
  1. black
  2. grey
  3. blue
  4. red
  5. brown
  6. white

My concern is how we live fictions, how fictions have real effects, become facts in that sense, and how our experience of the world changes depending on its arrangement into one narrative or another.

Ben Lerner

More Ben Lerner Quotes

  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I came to realize that far more important to me than any plot or conventional sense was the sheer directionality I felt while reading prose, the texture of time as it passed, life’s white machine.

    I came to realize that far more important to me than any plot or conventional sense was the sheer directionality I felt while reading prose, the texture of time as it passed, life’s white machine.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I’m defending fiction as a human capacity more than as a popular or dying literary genre.

    I’m defending fiction as a human capacity more than as a popular or dying literary genre.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I’ll work my way from irony to sincerity in the sinking city, a would-be Whitman of the vulnerable grid. Download This Image

    I’ll work my way from irony to sincerity in the sinking city, a would-be Whitman of the vulnerable grid.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I’m trying to be somebody on whom the experience is lost by supplanting it with its telling. I definitely do that in medical contexts, even in trivial ones. Download This Image

    I’m trying to be somebody on whom the experience is lost by supplanting it with its telling. I definitely do that in medical contexts, even in trivial ones.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - Few real people appear in my two novels, actually. “Ari” appears on the edge of this book a couple of times – but on the edge, she’s never in it, even if she’s a determining force from the outside. Everybody in the first book was basically made up, if never from scratch.

    Few real people appear in my two novels, actually. “Ari” appears on the edge of this book a couple of times – but on the edge, she’s never in it, even if she’s a determining force from the outside. Everybody in the first book was basically made up, if never from scratch.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - Anyway I read more contemporary poetry than contemporary fiction so my mind goes first to a kind of crass “conceptualism” that repeats vanguard gestures of the past minus the politics and historical context.

    Anyway I read more contemporary poetry than contemporary fiction so my mind goes first to a kind of crass “conceptualism” that repeats vanguard gestures of the past minus the politics and historical context.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - Shaving is a way to start the workday by ritually not cutting your throat when you’ve the chance.

    Shaving is a way to start the workday by ritually not cutting your throat when you’ve the chance.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I was a violent, bipolar, compulsive liar. I was a real American.

    I was a violent, bipolar, compulsive liar. I was a real American.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I think the parable is a peculiar way of saying that redemption is immanent whether or not it’s imminent, that the world to come is in a sense always already here, if still unavailable. I find this idea powerful for several reasons. For one thing, it’s an antidote to despair. Download This Image

    I think the parable is a peculiar way of saying that redemption is immanent whether or not it’s imminent, that the world to come is in a sense always already here, if still unavailable. I find this idea powerful for several reasons. For one thing, it’s an antidote to despair.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I didn’t want to write another book about fraudulence. Download This Image

    I didn’t want to write another book about fraudulence.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I think the anti-intellectualism of a lot of contemporary fiction is a kind of despairing of literature’s ability to be anything more than perfectly bound blog posts or transcribed sitcoms.

    I think the anti-intellectualism of a lot of contemporary fiction is a kind of despairing of literature’s ability to be anything more than perfectly bound blog posts or transcribed sitcoms.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I usually see the word “metafiction” applied to works that draw attention to their own devices, their own artificiality, in order to mock novelistic convention and show the impossibility of capturing a reality external to the text or whatever.

    I usually see the word “metafiction” applied to works that draw attention to their own devices, their own artificiality, in order to mock novelistic convention and show the impossibility of capturing a reality external to the text or whatever.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I wasn’t aware I’d write the novel when I wrote the New Yorker story either. And the narration of their construction in 10:04 is fiction, however flickering.

    I wasn’t aware I’d write the novel when I wrote the New Yorker story either. And the narration of their construction in 10:04 is fiction, however flickering.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - Many of the left thinkers that really matter to me – that formed a big part of my thinking about politics and art – emphasize how capitalism is a totality, how there’s no escape from it, no outside. Download This Image

    Many of the left thinkers that really matter to me – that formed a big part of my thinking about politics and art – emphasize how capitalism is a totality, how there’s no escape from it, no outside.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - Maybe now if you’re not an exhibitionist you’re private. Or maybe it’s just that for a lot of people – sometimes in interesting ways, sometimes in stupid ways – there’s no division between the art object and what surrounds it.

    Maybe now if you’re not an exhibitionist you’re private. Or maybe it’s just that for a lot of people – sometimes in interesting ways, sometimes in stupid ways – there’s no division between the art object and what surrounds it.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I don’t think “I’m going to publish this as fiction” but I think “I’m going to tell this story to a friend” and then I start telling the story in my mind as the experience transpires as a way of pretending it’s already happened.

    I don’t think “I’m going to publish this as fiction” but I think “I’m going to tell this story to a friend” and then I start telling the story in my mind as the experience transpires as a way of pretending it’s already happened.

    BEN LERNER