After Bush was elected in 2004 – please note that I didn’t say ‘re-elected’ – and I was walking around in my befuzzed state of confusion and low-grade depression, I set out more or systematically to read writers who’d grappled with that fundamental question of what America is, why it is the way it is. Ben Fountain Read Quote
I think if you spend much time dwelling on influence you can get self-conscious about every line you write. That’s a great way to freeze up. Ben Fountain Read Quote
I think I was lucky to come of age in a place and time – the American South in the 1960s and ’70s – when the machine hadn’t completely taken over life. The natural world was still the world, and machines – TV, telephone, cars – were still more or less ancillary, and computers were unheard of in everyday life. Ben Fountain Read Quote
The smartest thing I did in law school: asking my future wife to go out dancing with me. The smartest thing I did when practicing law: quitting. The smartest thing I’ve done in writing: following my own head and writing what I wanted to write, and nothing but. Ben Fountain Read Quote
The main thing about writing is… writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work. Ben Fountain Read Quote
I took two fiction-writing courses in college and majored in literature. I felt that I had a knack though I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a talent. But it scared me. I felt it was a childish thing wanting to write and that I would forget about it eventually. Ben Fountain Read Quote
My first visit to Haiti was in May 1991, four months into the initial term of Haiti’s first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. At the time, it seemed that Haiti was on the cusp of a new era. Ben Fountain Read Quote
Learning essential stuff is as much a discipline as going to the gym or sticking to a diet, and an excellent antidote for the modern condition of being numb and dumb. Ben Fountain Read Quote
