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Ben Marcus Biography

Ben Marcus (born 1967) is the author of four books of fiction. His latest book, Leaving the Sea: Stories, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in January 2014.

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Ben Marcus Quotes

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?

Choices, Feelings, Plain, Real, Time, Way

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

Disorder, Disorders, Induction, 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.

Circles, Die, Highest, Misunderstood, People, Storytelling

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

Launched, Mouths, Safe, Spelling, Technology

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.

Admission, Complexity, Embrace, Judaism

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

Attention, Done, Eventually, Feelings, Nothing

A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail.

Bound, Call, Desperate, Fail, Failing, Language

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.

Actually, Believed, Impact, Love, Lovely, Sorry

Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same.

Grief, Look, Looks, Nearly, Sound

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.

Come, Emotional, Levels, Writing

With students, one is often in the position where you have to be authoritative about what they're doing and connected to some principle. I prefer not really knowing the answer to anything interesting and I try to encourage that in teaching. If I start to feel certain about something my curiosity goes away, my mind shuts down. I'm sure that's not always true, it's stupid to generalise.

Certain, Interesting, Stupid, Teaching

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.

Hands, Meat, Quotidian, Stubborn, Thinking, Worry

Machineries of reason, machineries of conduct, machineries of virtue. The machine that regulates instinct, keeps one’s hands free of another man’s throat, free of one’s own. These machines have all, as someone said, gone too long in the elements. Gummed now, rusted, bloodless. I forget who said it and I no longer care.

Elements, Hands, Instinct, Long, Men, Rusted

A self needed to spill out sometimes, a body should show evidence of what the hell went on inside it.

Body, Self, Sometimes, Spill

People are considered as areas that resist light, mistakes in the air, collision sweet spots. At the time of this writing, the whole world is a crime scene: People eat space with their bodies; they are rain decayers; the wind is slaughtered when they move. A retaliation is probably coming. Should a person cease to move, she would cease to kill the sky, and the world might begin to recover.

Light, Mistake, Rain, Space, Sweet, Time

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.

Book, Darkness, Enormous, Think, Thinking, Thomas

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.

Cold, Dry, Like Being Alone, Love, Resurfaced, Underwater

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.

Bursting, Disgusted, Prayer, Rain, Sky, Used

I like big doses of grief when I read: Richard Yates, Flannery O'Connor, Kenzabaro Oe, Thomas Bernhard.

Big, Bigs, Dose, Doses, Grief, Yates

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

Accountability, Amazes, Kids, Parent, Power

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