Jesse Ball Quotes

Quotes about:

• I'm an elephant today. I will need to have lots of room and also a bowl of water on the floor.

  Jesse Ball

  Elephants, Water, Needs

  FaceBook post by Jesse Ball from Aug 05, 2012

  13 Copy quote

• If he acts, if he doesn't, it's meaningless. The whole thing goes forward. No one is important. No one at all.

  Jesse Ball

  Important, Whole, Ifs

  FaceBook post by Jesse Ball from Apr 11, 2013

  45 Copy quote

• First, he says, you have to go out into the world. This is not a simple matter of going outside one's door. No, that is simply going out. That's what one does when one is on the way to the store to buy a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a bottle of wine. When one goes out into the world, one is shedding preconceptions of past paths and ideas of past paths, and trying to move freely through an unsubstantiated and new geography.

  Jesse Ball

  Moving, Wine, Simple

  FaceBook post by Jesse Ball from Aug 21, 2013

  24 Copy quote

• I like small books. I like durable books. I like plain books. I like small type and thin pages.

  Jesse Ball

  Book, Pages, Type

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Three things are required of you: the wishes you made when you first knew the breadth of this life; the contract you signed when you decided your wishes were not true or possible; and the exacting of the punishment you agreed to when you knew you would break the contract of your life.

  Jesse Ball

  Punishment, Wish, Three

  FaceBook post by Jesse Ball from Nov 27, 2011

  4 Copy quote

• Not that believing such things has anything to do with whether they are true. You see that, don't you?

  Jesse Ball

  Believe, True You

  FaceBook post by Jesse Ball from Oct 30, 2011

  15 Copy quote

• Sunday was always the best of days for being the self you had intended to be, but were not, for one reason or another.

  Jesse Ball

  Sunday, Self, Reason

  Jesse Ball (2007). “Samedi the Deafness: A Novel”, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• I don't read books for pleasure, but in desperation.

  Jesse Ball

  Book, Desperation, Pleasure

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• In searching for a way out of my own troubles, I had found my way into the troubles of others, some long gone, and now I was trying to find my way back out, through their troubles, as if we human beings can ever learn from one another.

  Jesse Ball

  Long, Trying, Way

  FaceBook post by Jesse Ball from Sep 01, 2014

  4 Copy quote

• It is at the heart of our human enterprise, that is to say, at the heart of society, to allow consensus a power it ought not to have.

  Jesse Ball

  Heart, Enterprise, Humans

  Jesse Ball (2014). “Silence Once Begun: A Novel”, p.216, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• I believe in discovering the love that exists and then trying to understand it. Not to invent a love and try to make it exist, but to find what does exist, and then to see what it is.

  Jesse Ball

  Believe, Trying, Doe

  Jesse Ball (2014). “Silence Once Begun: A Novel”, p.183, Vintage

  10 Copy quote

• Different times and different structures make more sense at one point in life than at another.

  Jesse Ball

  Different, Structure, Points In Life

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• We tire differently if we love or love not.

  Jesse Ball

  Tire, Ifs

  Jesse Ball (2011). “The Curfew”, p.90, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• The old man began to sing. His voice was very lovely and obviously a part of something that the world had disposed of in its haste, evidence of a grander, kinder past.

  Jesse Ball

  Past, Men, Voice

  4 Copy quote

• That would be the death of anyone - to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn't know that. If it is offered, refuse!

  Jesse Ball

  Would Be, False Hope, Certainty

  FaceBook post by Jesse Ball from Jul 29, 2013

  4 Copy quote

• I'm confused, and brilliant books help me to be less so.

  Jesse Ball

  Confused, Book, Helping

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• …There are times when something is asked of us, and we find we must do it. There is no calculation involved, no measure of the necessity of the thing itself, the action that must be performed. There is simply an acknowledgment that we will do the thing in question, and then the thing is done, often at considerable personal cost. " "What goes into these decisions? What tiny factors, invisible, in the jutting edges of personality and circumstance, contribute to this inevitability?

  Jesse Ball

  Personality, Decision, Cost

  Jesse Ball (2011). “The Curfew”, p.38, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• One can't say how one behaved or why, really. Such situations, they are far more complex than any either/or proposition. It is simplistic to produce events in pairs and lean them against each other like cards. I suppose if you a playing go or shogi, then such a thing might be helpful, but that is not life.

  Jesse Ball

  Might, Pairs, Events

  4 Copy quote

• This is what we bear, I thought, the nearness of other lives.

  Jesse Ball

  Bears

  Jesse Ball (2014). “Silence Once Begun: A Novel”, p.173, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• I have a very basic notion of the structure the book might have - that's mostly it. The rest is luck and happenstance.

  Jesse Ball

  Book, Luck, Might

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• The books turn out to be about things afterwards. I don't go into them with concepts, for the most part.

  Jesse Ball

  Book, Turns, Concepts

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I have a different purpose in writing each novel. Some of them seem more similar than others, but the purposes are always different.

  Jesse Ball

  Writing, Different, Purpose

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I want to say less, and it's easier to say less.

  Jesse Ball

  Want, Easier

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• A beginning idea for a book might be: a boy emerges from a hole in the ground. He enters a house. The book will take place in the first ten minutes following his arrival.

  Jesse Ball

  Book, Boys, Ideas

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I don't start with an idea or concept in the sense that I flesh out an idea or concept and set it at the center of something.

  Jesse Ball

  Ideas, Flesh, Concepts

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

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