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Among other things, autoimmune disorders are an induction into a world of unstable information and no reliable expertise.

Ben Marcus

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
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
Suspense left my life a long time ago, now it has returned. I do not care for it.
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Care Long Suspense
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
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
In some sense, prose fiction is just a way of unlocking a space. If I can unlock the space, it comes out and it’s vivid, I find that I care about it, and it’s part of me.
BEN MARCUS

Care Fiction Space
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
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
Eventually you stop paying attention to your own feelings when there’s nothing to be done about them.
BEN MARCUS

Attention Done Feelings
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
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.
BEN MARCUS

House Kids Summer Wife Writing
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.
BEN MARCUS

Believe Dash Establish Indifference Language Love Wise
My parents showed me by example that they could balance their work and family lives.
BEN MARCUS

Balance Example 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
My goal, with whatever I’m working on, is to lose track of time.
BEN MARCUS

Goal Loses Track
Slamming the book shut produces a wind on the face, a weather that is copyrighted by the author, and this wind may not be deployed without permission, nor may the pages be turned without express written permission.
BEN MARCUS

Book Copyright Permisson Weather Wind

Among other things, autoimmune disorders are an induction into a world of unstable information and no reliable expertise.

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Among other things, autoimmune disorders are an induction into a world of unstable information and no reliable expertise.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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