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 MARCUSSuspense left my life a long time ago, now it has returned. I do not care for it.
More Ben Marcus Quotes
-
-
It amazes me that parents are allowed to raise kids. There’s so much power and often very little accountability.
BEN MARCUS -
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 -
Among other things, autoimmune disorders are an induction into a world of unstable information and no reliable expertise.
BEN MARCUS -
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 -
I like big doses of grief when I read: Richard Yates, Flannery O’Connor, Kenzabaro Oe, Thomas Bernhard.
BEN MARCUS -
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 -
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 -
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 -
My parents showed me by example that they could balance their work and family lives.
BEN MARCUS -
Eventually you stop paying attention to your own feelings when there’s nothing to be done about them.
BEN MARCUS -
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.
BEN MARCUS -
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 -
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 -
My goal, with whatever I’m working on, is to lose track of time.
BEN MARCUS -
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