“No matter their age or station in life, Billy can't help but regard his fellow Americans as children. They are bold and… — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
“But then self-doubt has always been there for Billy, self-doubt and its cousin the berating voice, these faithful companions have always been… — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
“...he wonders by what process virtually any discussion about the war seems to profane these ultimate matters of life and death. As… — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
Political rights notwithstanding, 'freedom' rings awfully hollow when you're getting nickel-and-dimed to death in your everyday life. — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
I think I was lucky to come of age in a place and time - the American South in the 1960s and… — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
The Kessler Theater is one such gem, an Art Deco beauty … for a slice of real life, there’s always the Kessler. — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
The Gilded Age robber barons - the Goulds, the Vanderbilts, the Morgans and Rockefellers - did quite well under laissez-faire. Most of… — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
You have the mainstream bourgeois life of the U.S., Europe, the "developed" world - the life of technology, education, mortgages, careers, a… — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
“What might be merely embarrassing in real life is made obscene and hostile by TV.” — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
“Much of life, fatherhood included, is the story of knowledge acquired too late: if only I’d known then what I know now,… — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
“All the fakeness just rolls right off them, maybe because the nonstop sales job of American life has instilled in them exceptionally… — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
You'd think family would be the one sure thing in life, the gimme? Points you got just for being born? So much… — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
“You could practically see the neurons firing in the kid’s skull. His body was all spring and torque, a bundle of fast-twitch… — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
“The singing triggers a soft detonation at his core, molten parts of him are flying everywhere and his ears ring to the tune of… — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
“Even harder was describing his sense that Shroom’s death might have ruined him for anything else, because when he died? when I felt his… — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
“Without ever exactly putting his mind to it, he's come to believe that loss is standard trajectory. Something new appears in the world—a baby,… — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
“But I am scared. Everybody's scared." "You know what I mean, like scared scared. Like coward scared, like if you never went to begin… — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
“God knows the war sucks, but he sees no great appeal in these tepid peacetime lives.” — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
“What he'd like to say is that he's lived it, if not the entire breadth and depth of the Christian faith then certainly the… — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
By the end of the first decade of writing, I considered myself a confirmed failure in the eyes of the world. — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
I started publishing stories in small magazines early on, but after seven or eight or nine years you feel like you need a little… — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
“I think sometimes nothing is better than something. I mean, I’d rather have nothing than let this guy use me like his bitch.” — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
“No it was my choice. It's what I wanted to do. And I knew they'd probably send me to Iraq. It's not like anybody… — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
It's amazing what happens when you stick yourself in a place and let things take their more or less natural course. — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
“As if sorrow is the true reality? Without ever putting his mind to it, he's come to believe that loss is the standard trajectory.” — Ben Fountain Copy Share Image
