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Eventually you stop paying attention to your own feelings when there’s nothing to be done about them.

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.
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Passion Profound Track
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.
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Prayer Rain Sky
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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Joy Lonely Passion
My parents showed me by example that they could balance their work and family lives.
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Balance Example Parent
A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail.
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Desperate Failing Language
Fiction is too complicated and too elusive to break down into a set of tricks.
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Breaking Complicated Down Fiction
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 like big doses of grief when I read: Richard Yates, Flannery O’Connor, Kenzabaro Oe, Thomas Bernhard.
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Bigs Dose Grief
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.
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Dispute Impact Love Sorry Times Wonder yself
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
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
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
To me one of the amazing technologies of writing is the way it can listen in on thoughts. I don’t feel that that’s natural to other art forms in the same way.
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Art Feel Listen Technology Writing
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.
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Art Believe Calculate Harm Language Pain Wise
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
Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same.
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Grief Looks Sound
The common, the quotidian, is so much more unyielding to me, really stubborn and hard to work with, and I like this because it makes me think and it makes me worry. I can’t just plunge my hand into the meat of it. I need new approaches.
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Hands Thinking Worry
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
A self needed to spill out sometimes, a body should show evidence of what the hell went on inside it.
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Body Self Sometimes
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
Teaching is all armchair. I learn about writing by writing and thinking about what I’ve written and throwing it away.
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Teaching Thinking Writing
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
I’m interested in the hope we invest in science, and the disappointment we can feel when science flattens, or ‘explains,’ the larger mysteries of religion.
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Disappointment Feels Mystery
My goal, with whatever I’m working on, is to lose track of time.
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Goal Loses Track
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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Home Labs Motivation
Being with him was like being alone underwater – everything was slow; nothing counted; I could not be harmed; I would feel dry and cold when I resurfaced.
BEN MARCUS

Alone Being Like Love Underwater

Eventually you stop paying attention to your own feelings when there’s nothing to be done about them.

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Eventually you stop paying attention to your own feelings when there’s nothing to be done about them.

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