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Mostly we’re motivated to control ourselves in public. Mostly. At home the motivation is much less clear. At home there’s a bit of a lab for bad behavior.

Ben Marcus

In certain strains of Judaism, there’s a profound passion for the ineffable. Contemplation of God is meant to be forever elusive, because, you know, our tiny minds can’t possibly comprehend Him. If we find ourselves comprehending Him, then we can be sure we’re off track.
BEN MARCUS

Passion Profound Track
The context of what can be known establishes that love and indifference are forms of language, but the wise addition of punctuation allows us to believe that there are other harms – the dash gives the reader the clear signal they are coming.
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Believe Dash Establish Indifference Language Love Wise
I’m attracted to how fraught the parent-child relationship is, swerving so easily between love and hostility, with almost no plausible way to end, unless someone dies.
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Children Parent Way
Spelling is a way to make words safe, at least for now, until another technology appears to soften attacks launched from the mouth.
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Mouth Safe Technology
My first book, ‘The Age of Wire and String,’ came out in 1995, and it was hardly reviewed at all.
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Age Book Review Wire
When I started writing at 18 or 19, I had a fear of anything autobiographical, but I’ve come to realise that my writing is very autobiographical at the emotional level.
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Emotional Level Writing
I work a lot in the summers. My family goes to Maine, where we have a little house. My wife’s a writer, too, and we can write for six hours a day and then play with the kids.
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House Kids Summer Wife Writing
My parents showed me by example that they could balance their work and family lives.
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Balance Example Parent
Fiction is too complicated and too elusive to break down into a set of tricks.
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Breaking Complicated Down Fiction
I like big doses of grief when I read: Richard Yates, Flannery O’Connor, Kenzabaro Oe, Thomas Bernhard.
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Bigs Dose Grief
To refrain from storytelling is perhaps one of the highest forms of respect we can pay. Those people, with no stories to circle them, can die without being misunderstood.
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Circles Misunderstood People
Judaism to me, as badly as I practiced it, what I’ve always loved about it was its total embrace of complexity, its admission of unknowability.
BEN MARCUS

Complexity Embrace Judaism
Among other things, autoimmune disorders are an induction into a world of unstable information and no reliable expertise.
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Disorder Information World
It amazes me that parents are allowed to raise kids. There’s so much power and often very little accountability.
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Accountability Kids Parent
Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same.
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Grief Looks Sound
Rain is used as white noise when God is disgusted by too much prayer, when the sky is stuffed to bursting with the noise of what people need.
BEN MARCUS

Prayer Rain Sky

Mostly we’re motivated to control ourselves in public. Mostly. At home the motivation is much less clear. At home there’s a bit of a lab for bad behavior.

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Mostly we’re motivated to control ourselves in public. Mostly. At home the motivation is much less clear. At home there’s a bit of a lab for bad behavior.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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