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It’s lonely to listen to the pleasure of others, not that I’ve made a habit of that kind of eavesdropping. There’s joy and passion in the next room, in the next bed, but it’s not yours.

Ben Marcus

Spelling is a way to make words safe, at least for now, until another technology appears to soften attacks launched from the mouth.
BEN MARCUS

Mouth Safe Technology
It’s lonely to listen to the pleasure of others, not that I’ve made a habit of that kind of eavesdropping. There’s joy and passion in the next room, in the next bed, but it’s not yours.
BEN MARCUS

Joy Lonely Passion
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

Home Labs Motivation
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
Fiction is too complicated and too elusive to break down into a set of tricks.
BEN MARCUS

Breaking Complicated Down Fiction
It amazes me that parents are allowed to raise kids. There’s so much power and often very little accountability.
BEN MARCUS

Accountability Kids Parent
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
A self needed to spill out sometimes, a body should show evidence of what the hell went on inside it.
BEN MARCUS

Body Self Sometimes
Teaching is all armchair. I learn about writing by writing and thinking about what I’ve written and throwing it away.
BEN MARCUS

Teaching Thinking Writing
I’m an enormous fan of Thomas Bernhard’s books, and I like the relentless feeling in his work – the pursuit of darkness, the negative – and I think in some sense I’ve internalised that as what one is supposed to do.
BEN MARCUS

Book Darkness Negative Thinking
Sorry, I said to myself, wondering how many times in my marriage I’d said that, how many times I’d meant it, how many times Claire had actually believed it, and, most important, how many times the utterance had any impact whatsoever on our dispute. What a lovely chart one could draw of this word Sorry.
BEN MARCUS

Dispute Impact Love Sorry Times Wonder yself
My first book, ‘The Age of Wire and String,’ came out in 1995, and it was hardly reviewed at all.
BEN MARCUS

Age Book Review Wire
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.
BEN MARCUS

Circles Misunderstood People
A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail.
BEN MARCUS

Desperate Failing Language
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
RHETORIC The art of making life less believable; the calculated use of language, not to alarm but to do full harm to our busy minds and properly dispose our listeners to a pain they have never dreamed of.
BEN MARCUS

Art Believe Calculate Harm Language Pain Wise

It’s lonely to listen to the pleasure of others, not that I’ve made a habit of that kind of eavesdropping. There’s joy and passion in the next room, in the next bed, but it’s not yours.

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It’s lonely to listen to the pleasure of others, not that I’ve made a habit of that kind of eavesdropping. There’s joy and passion in the next room, in the next bed, but it’s not yours.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ben Marcus Quotes