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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

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
I work, and then I leave the office, and I’m with my kids and just sort of enjoy them on a visceral level, and I don’t feel like I’m exorcising my own deep ideas about parenthood and about how my life will come into play in my work.
BEN MARCUS

Ideas Kids Parenthood Play
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.
BEN MARCUS

Disorder Information World
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

Hands Thinking Worry
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
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
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
My parents showed me by example that they could balance their work and family lives.
BEN MARCUS

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

Goal Loses Track
A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail.
BEN MARCUS

Desperate Failing Language
I like big doses of grief when I read: Richard Yates, Flannery O’Connor, Kenzabaro Oe, Thomas Bernhard.
BEN MARCUS

Bigs Dose Grief
Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same.
BEN MARCUS

Grief Looks Sound
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
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.
BEN MARCUS

Children Parent Way

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ben Marcus Quotes