My parents showed me by example that they could balance their work and family lives. Ben Marcus More Quotes by Ben Marcus More Quotes From Ben Marcus 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 parent children way 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 mystery disappointment feels 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 track passion profound 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 care space fiction 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 passion lonely joy 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 labs motivation home 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 worry hands thinking 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 play kids ideas 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 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 summer writing kids 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. Ben Marcus rain mistake sweet Fiction is too complicated and too elusive to break down into a set of tricks. Ben Marcus breaking-down complicated fiction Fiction becomes a place where I face certain fears such as losing language or losing my children. Ben Marcus faces children fiction I like big doses of grief when I read: Richard Yates, Flannery O'Connor, Kenzabaro Oe, Thomas Bernhard. Ben Marcus dose bigs grief Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same. Ben Marcus grief sound looks A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail. Ben Marcus desperate failing language 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 judaism embrace complexity My first book, 'The Age of Wire and String,' came out in 1995, and it was hardly reviewed at all. Ben Marcus wire age book My goal, with whatever I'm working on, is to lose track of time. Ben Marcus loses track goal I love the way dates in a text make us think that truth will follow. Ben Marcus way thinking
