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The problem is that if you’re self-conscious about being a person on whom nothing is lost, isn’t something lost – some kind of presence? You’re distracted by trying to be totally, perfectly impressionable.

  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - When the narrator feels like an octopus, when he says his limbs are starting to multiply, he means he has inklings of orders of perception beyond his individual body. Download This Image

    When the narrator feels like an octopus, when he says his limbs are starting to multiply, he means he has inklings of orders of perception beyond his individual body.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I’m defending fiction as a human capacity more than as a popular or dying literary genre.

    I’m defending fiction as a human capacity more than as a popular or dying literary genre.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I think the anti-intellectualism of a lot of contemporary fiction is a kind of despairing of literature’s ability to be anything more than perfectly bound blog posts or transcribed sitcoms.

    I think the anti-intellectualism of a lot of contemporary fiction is a kind of despairing of literature’s ability to be anything more than perfectly bound blog posts or transcribed sitcoms.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I usually see the word “metafiction” applied to works that draw attention to their own devices, their own artificiality, in order to mock novelistic convention and show the impossibility of capturing a reality external to the text or whatever.

    I usually see the word “metafiction” applied to works that draw attention to their own devices, their own artificiality, in order to mock novelistic convention and show the impossibility of capturing a reality external to the text or whatever.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I remember I had this recurring dream that we were playing a night game and instead of eye black we had mashed up the glowing bodies of fireflies and put that under our eyes. So our faces were glowing – a kind of night vision. Download This Image

    I remember I had this recurring dream that we were playing a night game and instead of eye black we had mashed up the glowing bodies of fireflies and put that under our eyes. So our faces were glowing – a kind of night vision.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - Anyway I read more contemporary poetry than contemporary fiction so my mind goes first to a kind of crass “conceptualism” that repeats vanguard gestures of the past minus the politics and historical context.

    Anyway I read more contemporary poetry than contemporary fiction so my mind goes first to a kind of crass “conceptualism” that repeats vanguard gestures of the past minus the politics and historical context.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I wasn’t aware I’d write the novel when I wrote the New Yorker story either. And the narration of their construction in 10:04 is fiction, however flickering.

    I wasn’t aware I’d write the novel when I wrote the New Yorker story either. And the narration of their construction in 10:04 is fiction, however flickering.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I’ll work my way from irony to sincerity in the sinking city, a would-be Whitman of the vulnerable grid. Download This Image

    I’ll work my way from irony to sincerity in the sinking city, a would-be Whitman of the vulnerable grid.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I don’t think it’s always a sign of respect for persons (inside or outside of fiction) to pretend to be able to represent, to have access to, their multi-dimensionality at every moment. That doesn’t imply people aren’t multi-dimensional. Download This Image

    I don’t think it’s always a sign of respect for persons (inside or outside of fiction) to pretend to be able to represent, to have access to, their multi-dimensionality at every moment. That doesn’t imply people aren’t multi-dimensional.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I was a violent, bipolar, compulsive liar. I was a real American.

    I was a violent, bipolar, compulsive liar. I was a real American.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I like to think – knowing that it’s an enabling fiction – of those moments as fragments from a world to come, a world where price isn’t the only measure of value.

    I like to think – knowing that it’s an enabling fiction – of those moments as fragments from a world to come, a world where price isn’t the only measure of value.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - Maybe now if you’re not an exhibitionist you’re private. Or maybe it’s just that for a lot of people – sometimes in interesting ways, sometimes in stupid ways – there’s no division between the art object and what surrounds it.

    Maybe now if you’re not an exhibitionist you’re private. Or maybe it’s just that for a lot of people – sometimes in interesting ways, sometimes in stupid ways – there’s no division between the art object and what surrounds it.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I don’t think “I’m going to publish this as fiction” but I think “I’m going to tell this story to a friend” and then I start telling the story in my mind as the experience transpires as a way of pretending it’s already happened.

    I don’t think “I’m going to publish this as fiction” but I think “I’m going to tell this story to a friend” and then I start telling the story in my mind as the experience transpires as a way of pretending it’s already happened.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - Maggie Nelson cuts through our culture’s prefabricated structures of thought and feeling with an intelligence whose ferocity is ultimately in the service of love. No piety is safe, no orthodoxy, no easy irony. The scare quotes burn off like fog. Download This Image

    Maggie Nelson cuts through our culture’s prefabricated structures of thought and feeling with an intelligence whose ferocity is ultimately in the service of love. No piety is safe, no orthodoxy, no easy irony. The scare quotes burn off like fog.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I have no interest in artists who are purely affirmative, who’ve made a commercialized fetish of the culture’s stupidity. Download This Image

    I have no interest in artists who are purely affirmative, who’ve made a commercialized fetish of the culture’s stupidity.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - What interests me about fiction is, in part, its flickering edge between realism and where a tear in the fabric of a story lets in some other sort of light. Download This Image

    What interests me about fiction is, in part, its flickering edge between realism and where a tear in the fabric of a story lets in some other sort of light.

    BEN LERNER