black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

In terms of optimism, I am optimistic. I do think that, in the long term, that America will right itself. I have to think so.

Ben H. Winters

I think it’s hard sometimes for people to grapple with the real-life consequences of political change.
BEN H. WINTERS

Real Sports Thinking
A book is not a tweet. A book is not a half-hour television show. A book requires for both reader and writer sustained discipline attention. It asks you to immerse yourself in something and really deeply feel it.
BEN H. WINTERS

Attention Book Discipline Half Require
I think that fiction has this special responsibility or this special ability to help people to empathize, to demand of people that they understand other individuals and other people’s experiences.
BEN H. WINTERS

People Responsibility Thinking
Even after he was elected, and even now, it still feels impossible. It felt like we had fallen into this wormhole of history.
BEN H. WINTERS

Even Fallen Feel History Impossible Now
We spend so much time, these days, on forms of literature that don’t rise to be literature, and I’m speaking about Twitter posts and quick and hot takes on different websites. We sort of zoom from thing to thing like a hummingbird.
BEN H. WINTERS

Different Hot Post Zoom
One thing we’ve learned about Donald Trump – this candidate first, president-elect, and now president – is that he has this sort of reptilian instinct for rooting out supposed enemies and finding people he can whip up distrust into rage.
BEN H. WINTERS

Enemy People President
History is not the linear sort of movement toward better and better things.
BEN H. WINTERS

Better Linear Movement Thing
There is little novelty in the detective who cannot solve himself.
BEN H. WINTERS

Detectives Littles Novelty
One thing that fiction does is it allows us to take big picture questions, big issues, big moral and socio-political changes and see how they play out on real people’s lives, with real individuals.
BEN H. WINTERS

Issues Moral Play Real
I think that if there is a great gift that this [Donald Trump] election gave us, is this sort of sense of vigilance, the sense that we have to remain on guard. We have to support our free press.
BEN H. WINTERS

Gift Great Press Sense Support Think
Our political divides have become our personal divides.
BEN H. WINTERS

Become Divide Personal Political
We think, “Well, what are you gonna do?” In a way, that little instinct, that “What are you gonna do?” is the most dangerous thing in the world.
BEN H. WINTERS

Dangerous Instinct Little Think Way
It is really something, the extent to which we allow ourselves to live without thinking of things that we know, in the abstract, are bad, and are going on right now, somewhere far away.
BEN H. WINTERS

Away Far Thinking World
We forget the conditions – not only in slavery – but after slavery, when there was this purposeful locking out of African Americans from economic opportunity. Or we forget today’s incarceration rates, and educational and housing discrimination; all of these things.
BEN H. WINTERS

Educational Long Opportunity
A pool of melancholy blooms in my chest and rushes into my body like deep-blue blood.
BEN H. WINTERS

Blood Blue Depression
That one lesson that African American communities have learned over the centuries in America is that you can’t just take for granted that things will steadily get better and better and better until they’re great. It is fits and starts. It is backward and forward.
BEN H. WINTERS

Community Country Get Better

In terms of optimism, I am optimistic. I do think that, in the long term, that America will right itself. I have to think so.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

In terms of optimism, I am optimistic. I do think that, in the long term, that America will right itself. I have to think so.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ben H. Winters Quotes