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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.

Ben Marcus

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.
BEN MARCUS

Art Feel Listen Technology Writing
My goal, with whatever I’m working on, is to lose track of time.
BEN MARCUS

Goal Loses Track
Eventually you stop paying attention to your own feelings when there’s nothing to be done about them.
BEN MARCUS

Attention Done Feelings
I love the way dates in a text make us think that truth will follow.
BEN MARCUS

Follow Thinking Truth Way
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
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
You can test things out without terrible consequences. Or maybe the consequences are there, but they are deferred, buried, much harder to detect.
BEN MARCUS

Consequences Detect Terrible Test
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
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
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
Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same.
BEN MARCUS

Grief Looks Sound
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.
BEN MARCUS

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

Disorder Information World
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
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 like big doses of grief when I read: Richard Yates, Flannery O’Connor, Kenzabaro Oe, Thomas Bernhard.
BEN MARCUS

Bigs Dose Grief

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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