I started publishing stories in small magazines early on, but after seven or eight or nine years you feel like you need a little more than that to show for your efforts.
BEN FOUNTAINThere 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.
More Ben Fountain Quotes
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Maybe the light’s at the other end of the tunnel.
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The funny thing is, about the time I let go of any aspiration toward worldly success, that’s about the time I started writing decent work.
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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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I’m ashamed and embarrassed to say that I’ve read very little of David Foster Wallace’s work. It’s a huge gap in my education, one of many.
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It took me 10 years to write a story that pleased me – that I could look at after it was published and not cringe.
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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.
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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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Americans are incredibly polite as long as they get what they want.
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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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If a person wants to be of any use to himself, he better insist on getting his fair share of beauty and pleasure, and if there’s something about the system that’s keeping him from getting his share, then I think he’s well within his rights to fight to change that.
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Somewhere along the way America became a giant mall with a country attached.
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Eruptions of talent continue to happen in Haiti, in spite of everything.
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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.
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I have a horror of being self-indulgent and wasting time, and there is that risk in doing this kind of work. Are you totally deluded in sitting down at a desk every day and trying to write something? Is it self-indulgent, or might it possibly lead to something worthwhile?
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So many interlocking spirals of history, genetics, common cause, and struggle that it should be the most basic of all drives, that you would strive to protect and love one another, yet this bond that should be the big no-brainer was in fact the hardest thing.
BEN FOUNTAIN