Quote

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

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Ben Marcus
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: October 11
Author
Novelist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Without
Forms
People
Highest
Pay
Perhaps
Respect
Refrain
Dies
Misunderstood
Form
Circle
Stories
Circles

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It amazes me that parents are allowed to raise kids. There's so much power and often very little accountability.
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My parents showed me by example that they could balance their work and family lives.
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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.
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Among other things, autoimmune disorders are an induction into a world of unstable information and no reliable expertise.
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Fiction is too complicated and too elusive to break down into a set of tricks.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail.
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My goal, with whatever I'm working on, is to lose track of time.
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Suspense left my life a long time ago, now it has returned. I do not care for it.
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Slamming the book shut produces a wind on the face, a weather that is copyrighted by the author, and this wind may not be deployed without permission, nor may the pages be turned without express written permission.
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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.
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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.
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My first book, 'The Age of Wire and String,' came out in 1995, and it was hardly reviewed at all.
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I like big doses of grief when I read: Richard Yates, Flannery O'Connor, Kenzabaro Oe, Thomas Bernhard.
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