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.
BEN FOUNTAINThe 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.
More Ben Fountain Quotes
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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.
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Eruptions of talent continue to happen in Haiti, in spite of everything.
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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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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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I thought when I started writing that I’d have a book out in four or five years, and as it became apparent that that wasn’t going to happen, I became increasingly frustrated and unsure of myself.
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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.
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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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At a certain point I decided to keep on because I felt like the work was getting better, and I was taking great pleasure in that.
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Maybe the light’s at the other end of the tunnel.
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If you could figure out how to live with family then you’d gone a long way toward finding your peace.
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Haiti is unique – the first successful slave revolt in history, the first black republic etc., and then when you get into the culture, the voodoo, and that wonderful synchretization of Christian and African belief and symbology, it’s like nothing the world has ever seen.
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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.
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It is sort of weird being honored for the worst day of your life.
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I realized I was never going to have any peace with myself unless I made an honest stab at trying to write.
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Americans are incredibly polite as long as they get what they want.
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