Ben Marcus Quotes

Quotes about:

• Spelling is a way to make words safe, at least for now, until another technology appears to soften attacks launched from the mouth.

  Ben Marcus

  Technology, Mouths, Safe

  Ben Marcus (2007). “Notable American Women: A Novel”, p.55, Vintage

  47 Copy quote

• It amazes me that parents are allowed to raise kids. There's so much power and often very little accountability.

  Ben Marcus

  Kids, Parent, Accountability

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• 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

  "This week in fiction:Ben Marcus" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. May 11, 2013.

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• 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, People, Misunderstood

  Ben Marcus (2012). “The Flame Alphabet”, p.327, Granta Books

  4 Copy quote

• Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same.

  Ben Marcus

  Grief, Sound, Looks

  Ben Marcus (2012). “The Flame Alphabet”, p.225, Granta Books

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• Teaching is all armchair. I learn about writing by writing and thinking about what I've written and throwing it away.

  Ben Marcus

  Teaching, Writing, Thinking

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• 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, Track, Profound

  4 Copy quote

• I love the way dates in a text make us think that truth will follow.

  Ben Marcus

  Thinking, Way

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• My goal, with whatever I'm working on, is to lose track of time.

  Ben Marcus

  Track, Goal, Loses

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• 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

  Writing, Emotional, Levels

  "Ben Marcus: 'Writing has to earn people's interest'". Interview with Killian Fox, www.theguardian.com. June 16, 2012.

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• I always, at least back then, struggled with emotion in writing. I felt like I could do odd, unusual things, but there wouldn't be enough feeling in them, and maybe if there's a progression at all to anything that I've done it's that I've always wanted to have a high - an almost overwhelming - degree of feeling in what I write.

  Ben Marcus

  Writing, Feelings, Done

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• Among other things, autoimmune disorders are an induction into a world of unstable information and no reliable expertise.

  Ben Marcus

  World, Information, Disorder

  "This week in fiction: Ben Marcus" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. May 11, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• Fiction is too complicated and too elusive to break down into a set of tricks.

  Ben Marcus

  Fiction, Complicated, Breaking Down

  "'A reading list is not my trophy case.' An Interview with Ben Marcus About His Syllabus". Interview with Stephanie Palumbo, logger.believermag.com. June 24, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ben Marcus

  Prayer, Rain, Sky

  Ben Marcus (2007). “Notable American Women: A Novel”, p.55, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• 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, Mystery, Feels

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• 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

  Space, Fiction, Care

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

  Ben Marcus

  Feelings, Attention, Done

  Ben Marcus (2012). “The Flame Alphabet”, p.29, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• Suspense left my life a long time ago, now it has returned. I do not care for it.

  Ben Marcus

  Long, Suspense, Care

  Ben Marcus (2012). “The Flame Alphabet”, p.269, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Embrace, Judaism, Complexity

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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. 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.

  Ben Marcus

  Wise, Art, Pain

  Ben Marcus (2013). “The Age of Wire and String”, p.92, Granta Books

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ben Marcus

  Lonely, Passion, Joy

  "This week in fiction:Ben Marcus" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. May 11, 2013.

  9 Copy quote

• 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. 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

  Motivation, Home, Labs

  "This week in fiction:Ben Marcus" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. May 11, 2013.

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• 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, Writing, Technology

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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

  Thinking, Hands, Worry

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• I don't like real places, but I don't like imagined ones either. I feel like I'm looking for some mixture and it's very hard for me to say because I like to use real place names because there's an uncanny feeling to them, but at the same time I don't ever really try to make them plausible. Sometimes I like to use them as a way to hide in plain sight a little bit, because to me a very exotic or imagined setting has a lot of weight and a lot of burden to it, and it doesn't suit me, but a real place seems to have its own weird legacy, so I don't know what the choice is?

  Ben Marcus

  Real, Choices, Feelings

  4 Copy quote

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