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1. black
2. grey
3. blue
4. red
5. brown
6. white

If you could figure out how to live with family then you’d gone a long way toward finding your peace.

Ben Fountain

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GoneLongWay

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More Ben Fountain Quotes

• 

  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.

  BEN FOUNTAIN
  LifeStruggleThingsThinking
• 

  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.

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• 

  Late bloomer’ is another way of saying ‘slow learner.

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• 

  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.

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• 

  From about the age of 15 or 16 I’d had the notion that I wanted to write fiction, and I’d done enough in college to satisfy myself that I had a knack for it – I wouldn’t call it “talent” – though I wondered if I’d ever have the guts to actually commit to it.

  BEN FOUNTAIN
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• 

  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.

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• 

  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.

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• 

  The Kessler Theater is one such gem, an Art Deco beauty … for a slice of real life, there’s always the Kessler.

  BEN FOUNTAIN
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• 

  Americans are incredibly polite as long as they get what they want.

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• 

  By the end of the first decade of writing, I considered myself a confirmed failure in the eyes of the world.

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  EyeWorldWriting
• 

  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.

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• 

  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.

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• 

  It’s amazing what happens when you stick yourself in a place and let things take their more or less natural course.

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• 

  Somewhere along the way America became a giant mall with a country attached.

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  AmericaCountryGiant
• 

  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.

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• 

  Eruptions of talent continue to happen in Haiti, in spite of everything.

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