Literature is one of those realms in which giving out prizes can seem not merely dubious but positively obtuse. — Ben Dolnick Books Copy Share Image
A novel is no mere assemblage of gears; it is a wild and living being. And how are you to discern the… — Ben Dolnick Books Copy Share Image
During the couple of years it took to write 'At The Bottom of Everything', I decided, on the sort of hopeful whim… — Ben Dolnick Everything Copy Share Image
Enrichment happened to be my favorite time of day in the Children's Zoo, since it offered relief from the security-guard-esque standing around… — Ben Dolnick Children Copy Share Image
True atonement isn't the periodic shaving of karmic stubble via confessional; it requires deep, truthful change. It means doing the hardest thing… — Ben Dolnick Atonement Copy Share Image
Literary interviews are inevitably packed with the nuts and bolts of how writers do their work, and there's very little that aspiring… — Ben Dolnick Aspiring writers Copy Share Image
Of course I knew that writing was terrifically hard work and that there was no secret code, as in a video game,… — Ben Dolnick Game Copy Share Image
Writing is a sufficiently lonely and mysterious pastime that I don't begrudge myself a talisman or two, so long as they don't… — Ben Dolnick Long Copy Share Image
We humans, just like the animals in our zoos, were born into bodies whose workings are both mechanistically predictable and unfathomably complex.… — Ben Dolnick Animals Copy Share Image
To learn a piece on the piano - even a simple one - has proved every bit as agonizing as writing a… — Ben Dolnick Book Copy Share Image
Sometimes I think there ought to be a coat of arms for all of us who listen to Oberst's band Bright Eyes… — Ben Dolnick Age Copy Share Image
Herta Muller, Mo Yan, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio - for many of us, the Nobels have become doubly educational: We simultaneously learn… — Ben Dolnick Existence Copy Share Image
Beginning in middle school, the era of wide-margined, Bible-paged anthologies, short stories develop unpromising associations - and these associations often linger through… — Ben Dolnick Anthologies Copy Share Image
Every morning as I begin my work day, my computer presents me with the usual array of garbage: email, Twitter, updates on… — Ben Dolnick Computers Copy Share Image
Oberst is one of those musicians that some people hate in a visceral, biological way. — Ben Dolnick Hate Copy Share Image
A short-story collection is harder to formulate pithy sentences about. — Ben Dolnick About Copy Share Image
“Driving yourself insane on the Internet is as easy as checking the weather.” — Ben Dolnick Internet Copy Share Image
There's something to be said for a likable character, but fiction has a way of upending our ordinary standards. — Ben Dolnick Character Copy Share Image
For a long time, since story collections look almost precisely like novels, I presumed that they were meant to be enjoyed in… — Ben Dolnick Books Copy Share Image
I will never, most likely, be good at the piano, but thanks to it, I will never forget the humbling, infuriating, necessary… — Ben Dolnick Forget Copy Share Image
I've sold all but one of my microphones, put away my mini-notebooks, stopped scouring the Internet for scraps of wisdom. — Ben Dolnick Away Copy Share Image
I would love to love Saul Bellow, but by page fifty of 'Herzog', something within me has wandered into another room. — Ben Dolnick Fifty Copy Share Image
Philip Roth has made a cottage industry of unlikable characters, but compared with Mickey Sabbath, the furious and profane protagonist of 'Sabbath's… — Ben Dolnick Cottage Copy Share Image
The patron saint of outlining - the bespectacled siren who sings to me from his spotless rock - is P. G. Wodehouse. — Ben Dolnick His Copy Share Image
'At Freddie's' takes place in 1960s London at the Temple Stage School for child actors. It has a plot that makes you… — Ben Dolnick Books Copy Share Image
When I first read 'At Freddie's', I was struggling with my own writing, particularly with how to write about a sad subject… — Ben Dolnick Books Copy Share Image
A novel quite possibly won't be good and, even more possibly, will have not-good parts, but at least it won't shape-shift on… — Ben Dolnick Books Copy Share Image
For me, novel-writing, by its nature, contains months of feeling lost, gloomy, fatally misguided. The challenge has always been in assuring myself… — Ben Dolnick Books Copy Share Image
Upon reading the deeply serious opening of Scott Spencer's 'Endless Love', you will very likely laugh out loud. The tone is something… — Ben Dolnick Comedy Copy Share Image
When I started researching the eco effects of eating meat, I'd assumed, for no good reason, that environmental irresponsibility would correspond to… — Ben Dolnick Bad Copy Share Image
In the Children's Zoo, Enrichment meant presenting the goats with a trash can smeared with peanut butter or dangling keys at the… — Ben Dolnick Children Copy Share Image
To write fiction is to think that you're doing it wrong - that your work habits are inhibiting you; that you've chosen… — Ben Dolnick Book Copy Share Image
Books like Munro's are so deeply personal and idiosyncratic that it feels like a violation to subject them to the crude business… — Ben Dolnick Books Copy Share Image
I know very well that to admit to loving Bright Eyes is to admit to having an overgrown brain region devoted to… — Ben Dolnick Brain Copy Share Image
People often talk about the characters in books as if they were considering whom to invite to a dinner party. 'Oh, I… — Ben Dolnick Books Copy Share Image
One of my more hectoring voices, throughout my career, has been the one that says I ought to stop what I'm doing… — Ben Dolnick Career Copy Share Image
A social worker named Cosette Rae, along with a therapist named Hilarie Cash, founded 'ReSTART' in what, until then, had been Rae's… — Ben Dolnick Cash Copy Share Image
If you were placing bets on which author would write the tenderest, most moving book about fatherhood, Philip Roth would probably come… — Ben Dolnick Book Copy Share Image
Penelope Fitzgerald's nine novels are thin enough that if you were so inclined, you could take her entire literary output down from… — Ben Dolnick Books Copy Share Image
