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 FOUNTAINBy the end of the first decade of writing, I considered myself a confirmed failure in the eyes of the world.
More Ben Fountain Quotes
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I got brilliant stories from people who’d never set foot in an MFA program and had published very little, and terrible stories from people who’d published a lot and had all the credentials. It was all over the map and that was part of the fun.
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Somewhere along the way America became a giant mall with a country attached.
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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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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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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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Americans are incredibly polite as long as they get what they want.
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Maybe the light’s at the other end of the tunnel.
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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’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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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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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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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 never listen to music when I’m writing.
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