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  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  1. black
  2. grey
  3. blue
  4. red
  5. brown
  6. white

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

More Ben Lerner Quotes

  • 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 - 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
  • 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 - 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 didn’t want to write another book about fraudulence. Download This Image

    I didn’t want to write another book about fraudulence.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - Experiments with the “as if” of fiction are often more lively in poetry and criticism and other modes of writing than in weak short stories or novels. Download This Image

    Experiments with the “as if” of fiction are often more lively in poetry and criticism and other modes of writing than in weak short stories or novels.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - If I was a poet, I had become one because poetry, more intensely than any other practice, could not evade its anachronism and marginality and so constituted a kind of acknowledgment of my own preposterousness, admitting my bad faith in good faith, so to speak.

    If I was a poet, I had become one because poetry, more intensely than any other practice, could not evade its anachronism and marginality and so constituted a kind of acknowledgment of my own preposterousness, admitting my bad faith in good faith, so to speak.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - My concern is how we live fictions, how fictions have real effects, become facts in that sense, and how our experience of the world changes depending on its arrangement into one narrative or another.

    My concern is how we live fictions, how fictions have real effects, become facts in that sense, and how our experience of the world changes depending on its arrangement into one narrative or another.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - Just in case God isn’t dead, our astronauts carry sidearms.

    Just in case God isn’t dead, our astronauts carry sidearms.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - The transpersonal is more awe-inspiring, more exciting than the thing we confuse it for.

    The transpersonal is more awe-inspiring, more exciting than the thing we confuse it for.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - Art has to offer something other than stylized despair.

    Art has to offer something other than stylized despair.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - Few real people appear in my two novels, actually. “Ari” appears on the edge of this book a couple of times – but on the edge, she’s never in it, even if she’s a determining force from the outside. Everybody in the first book was basically made up, if never from scratch.

    Few real people appear in my two novels, actually. “Ari” appears on the edge of this book a couple of times – but on the edge, she’s never in it, even if she’s a determining force from the outside. Everybody in the first book was basically made up, if never from scratch.

    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 - 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. Download This Image

    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.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I think the parable is a peculiar way of saying that redemption is immanent whether or not it’s imminent, that the world to come is in a sense always already here, if still unavailable. I find this idea powerful for several reasons. For one thing, it’s an antidote to despair. Download This Image

    I think the parable is a peculiar way of saying that redemption is immanent whether or not it’s imminent, that the world to come is in a sense always already here, if still unavailable. I find this idea powerful for several reasons. For one thing, it’s an antidote to despair.

    BEN LERNER
  • Share on Facebook Tweet this! Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Share on Telegram Ben Lerner Quote - I came to realize that far more important to me than any plot or conventional sense was the sheer directionality I felt while reading prose, the texture of time as it passed, life’s white machine.

    I came to realize that far more important to me than any plot or conventional sense was the sheer directionality I felt while reading prose, the texture of time as it passed, life’s white machine.

    BEN LERNER