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From about the age of 15 or 16 I'd had the notion that I wanted to write fiction, and I'd done enough in college to satisfy myself that I had a knack for it - I wouldn't call it talent - though I wondered if I'd ever have the guts to actually commit to it.

Ben Fountain

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Ben Fountain
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: January 1
Fiction Writer
Novelist
Writer
NC
United States
Write
Wouldn
Ever
College
Wanted
Fiction
Knack
Done
Talent
Satisfy
Enough
Call
Wondered
Writing
Though
Guts
Age
Commit
Actually
Notion

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Somewhere along the way America became a giant mall with a country attached.
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I never listen to music when I'm writing.
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I quit law in 1988 to start writing, and it took me 17 years from that point to get a book contract. I guess you can say I was on the slow train.
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It took me 10 years to write a story that pleased me - that I could look at after it was published and not cringe.
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Maybe the light's at the other end of the tunnel.
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I kept going back while I was writing the novel - which never sold, may it rest in peace - and by the time it was finished I had too many connections to Haiti to walk away.
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I got brilliant stories from people who'd never set foot in an MFA program and had published very little, and terrible stories from people who'd published a lot and had all the credentials. It was all over the map and that was part of the fun.
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Haiti is unique - the first successful slave revolt in history, the first black republic etc., and then when you get into the culture, the voodoo, and that wonderful synchretization of Christian and African belief and symbology, it's like nothing the world has ever seen.
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The Kessler Theater is one such gem, an Art Deco beauty … for a slice of real life, there’s always the Kessler.
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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.
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It's amazing what happens when you stick yourself in a place and let things take their more or less natural course.
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Americans are incredibly polite as long as they get what they want.
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If a person wants to be of any use to himself, he better insist on getting his fair share of beauty and pleasure, and if there's something about the system that's keeping him from getting his share, then I think he's well within his rights to fight to change that.
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You have the mainstream bourgeois life of the U.S., Europe, the developed world - the life of technology, education, mortgages, careers, a certain level of physical comfort - while on the other hand, several billion people on the planet exist on less than a dollar a day. That's a huge and terrible reality to get your head around.
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I'm ashamed and embarrassed to say that I've read very little of David Foster Wallace's work. It's a huge gap in my education, one of many.
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There was no such thing as perfection in this world, only moments of such extreme transparency that you forgot yourself, a holy mercy if there ever was one.
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I thought when I started writing that I'd have a book out in four or five years, and as it became apparent that that wasn't going to happen, I became increasingly frustrated and unsure of myself.
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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.
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I realized I was never going to have any peace with myself unless I made an honest stab at trying to write.
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If you want to write, then write if you don't want to write, then don't write. I fell into the former category, and I just made the decision that I'd keep on because I liked it and might someday do something decent.
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