Quote

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

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Ben Marcus
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: October 11
Author
Novelist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Interested
Religion
Flattens
Hope
Explains
Science
Mysteries
Feel
Invest
Feels
Larger
Disappointment
Mystery

More quotes by Ben Marcus

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Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same.
Ben Marcus
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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.
Ben Marcus
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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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A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail.
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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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A self needed to spill out sometimes, a body should show evidence of what the hell went on inside it.
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I always, at least back then, struggled with emotion in writing. I felt like I could do odd, unusual things, but there wouldn't be enough feeling in them, and maybe if there's a progression at all to anything that I've done it's that I've always wanted to have a high - an almost overwhelming - degree of feeling in what I write.
Ben Marcus
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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.
Ben Marcus
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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.
Ben Marcus
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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
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I love the way dates in a text make us think that truth will follow.
Ben Marcus
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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.
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My parents showed me by example that they could balance their work and family lives.
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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.
Ben Marcus
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Fiction becomes a place where I face certain fears such as losing language or losing my children.
Ben Marcus
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Fiction is too complicated and too elusive to break down into a set of tricks.
Ben Marcus
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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.
Ben Marcus
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It amazes me that parents are allowed to raise kids. There's so much power and often very little accountability.
Ben Marcus
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My goal, with whatever I'm working on, is to lose track of time.
Ben Marcus
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My first book, 'The Age of Wire and String,' came out in 1995, and it was hardly reviewed at all.
Ben Marcus